Syracuse University students across multiple schools and colleges are coming together in a six-week collaborative project on designing and pitching inventions.

The invention project, known as Invention Factory, will be offered from May to June on the SU campus and at the SU Fisher Center in New York City. Each branch will be accepting 20 undergraduate students and admission is rolling. Students in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, School of Architecture and the College of Visual and Performing Arts School of Design are able to apply.

It is a pilot program at SU, but has done well at The Cooper Union, a small private college in New York City, for four years, said Alan Wolf, professor of physics at The Cooper Union.

Teresa Dahlberg, dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science and a former dean at The Cooper Union, said she was impressed by the program there and wanted to bring it to SU.

“I have seen it transform students’ ability to innovate, their self-confidence and, most importantly, their communication skills,” Dahlberg said. “The accelerator provides students with the real world experiences gained by undergoing an iterative process of design, prototype and pitch in an immersive environment free from distractions of classes or jobs.”

Students from each of the colleges involved bring different skills and ways of thought to the table. James Fathers, professor and director of VPA’s School of Design, said the three schools incorporate the themes of the project in their curriculum.

Engineering students have more technical strengths, design students have creative and divergent thinking strengths and architecture students are the hybrid of both with high level conceptual thinking on human space, Fathers said. The interest is in seeing how teams of students from across disciplines will start to leverage each others’ ability, and see how that changes the innovation space.

In the first week, students choose a partner to work with and conceptualize an invention they want to focus on, Wolf said. Then they spend the next five weeks prototyping and presenting. Every team is given a budget of up to $1,000 for materials.

Students have access to laser cutters, 3-D printers and other equipment to implement their designs. Their products must be tangible and have a hardware component, but can include software, Wolf said.

“It’s going to be people exploiting the skills they already have and some people developing new skills,” Wolf said.

Every week, teams will present to guest evaluators who critique their inventions and assess the practicality, cost, safety and manufacturability of products, Wolf said. Students are expected to use the feedback to resolve issues as they move toward a more perfect iteration.

At the culmination of the program, students will present their final device to a board who makes a decision as to the winners who are awarded up to $5,000 based on a synthesis of all the criteria.

By the end of the program, students will have filed a provisional patent application, which buys them one year of protection for their invention and allows them time to explore further development with potential investors.

Wolf said he was amazed that every team in the past had come up with good inventions.

“Now we’ve done it four times, and we’ve never had a pair of students fail to come up with a good idea,” he said. “When the program ends, we don’t stop trying to help the kids move forward.”

Fathers said the program would be a plus to the existing entrepreneurial model in Syracuse, which currently focuses more on business plans as opposed to actual development, design and patenting of products and services.

The program is also a way for students to get tangible examples of how they developed a product in a collaborative way, he said, expressing his hope that students ideally will continue to develop their projects through the entrepreneurial channels such as Blackstone LaunchPad, Couri Hatchery, the Sandbox and the Tech Garden.

Wolf said there’s not one type of person best for this program.

“You’ve got to be committed,” Fathers said. “If you’re passionate about an idea, if you’re passionate about progress via invention and innovation, you’re going to get the most out of it.”

Published on November 6, 2016 at 10:10 pm