It looks like you could have sold licenses to this or gone the startup route. Might have been slower and less glamorous than the gig you wound up getting, though.
The UX looks simple and reasonable. Frankly better than Gimp.
Only for people who think that things are good to the extent they "resemble Photoshop as much as possible." [direct quote] The Photoshop UI isn't ideal, it's fairly terrible (not as bad as Illustrator, but they're both just old), but people don't want to waste the huge effort it took to commit all of that to muscle memory.
Cloning Photoshop for a thesis is wild, though. From a comic book reader to most of Photoshop in one leap.
The UX looks simple and reasonable. Frankly better than Gimp.
Really cool work!