MSOE’s cohort of University Innovation Fellows (UIF) traveled to California to attend the UIF Silicon Valley Meetup at Stanford University’s d.school. The three-day event consisted of a variety of workshops ranging from designing for extreme affordability, to mindfulness and meditation. Other workshops focused on designing for belonging, changing your inner game to change the world, learning in the metaverse and more. 

MSOE’s fourth cohort of fellows include Muskan Kanungo, Sofia Edwina Paredes, Paul Rinaldi and Jonathan Wagenknecht. This experience was extra special for the senior cohort as they were able to meet and network with fellows they trained with two years ago.

“We met tons of amazing University Innovation Fellows from all over the world such as Lebanon, the Netherlands, Hamburg, Oklahoma, Brazil and many of the states,” said Wagenknecht. “We learned a lot just from talking with them through some of the projects we’re working on as well as what they’ve attempted at their schools to bring about change in higher education learning methods.”

The meetup inspired the fellows and gave them motivation to “continue challenging the world and our corners of it through empathy.”

This cohort of fellows has been dedicated to engaging MSOE’s campus community and increasing awareness of MSOE’s innovation and entrepreneurship resources. Their projects include designing and launching a prototyping cart for design thinking workshops, creating and sending the biweekly I&E Hub Newsletter, creating a website of innovation resources, assisting with Welcome Week activities and they are creating a podcast, which can be found on Spotify.

“We are currently working on recording interviews for the Inno Entre Convos podcast by UIF for MSOE students and faculty. We are interviewing current and past innovators and entrepreneurs who have worked at or learned from MSOE,” the group said. 

In their final months before graduation in May, the cohort interviewed and recruited the next cohort of fellows to pass the baton to.  

“We look forward to the next cohort exploring and finding the current problems on campus that they’d like to work at finding a solution to. They experienced various parts of distance learning and have a younger perspective than us. We know that they will bring a strong, positive impact on campus next year.”