The Inovation Center's mission is to teach and deliver innovation through corporate sponsored classes, labs, and programs.
Innovation ≠ Invention
Innovation is the application of abstract knowledge in a new way.
Innovation is applied and good innovation moves away from more traditional applications. The work we do is in pursuit of solving a specific problem for a partner. It cannot live apart from a need. How the need is identified, how we define the problem, how we view the current landscape, and the way we bring technology into the solution are all ingredients for innovation.
Integrative thinking

Integrative thinking is inclusive. Problems, people, and users are complex. So are the ideas that need to account for multiple stakeholders in a system.
Innovation is collectively created and integrative thinking allows for a diverse range of complex solutions, as well as a diverse combination of innovators. Interdisciplinary collaboration is essential to the process because personal perspectives, histories, socio-cultural background, race, and gender all contribute to framing and solving a problem.
Our process
Our Innovation process is divergent, convergent, non-linear, and multifaceted. In reality it is uncomfortably ambiguous. Our process is based on a framework that uses a compilation of tools from Business, the Social Sciences, Engineering, and Design.
Our process

Future Expansion






Expanding our reach.
We are expanding our reach within the university, providing interdisciplinary innovation opportunities across campus. We play a central role in being the place of integration and collaboration for the university. This requires more space for student teams, classes, sponsored labs, and cross-college events. Our working methods require more flexibility, room for growth, security for partners, openness for the community, and visibility to the university.
Creating an innovation talent force for the City of Chicago.
We are the front door to UIC’s corporate collaboration initiatives. When civic leaders and corporate partners visit the Innovation Center, they see and understand the interdisciplinary collaboration methods we possess to provide new skills, help solve complex problems, and create and retain talent in our city.
Our new space.
To work with us on the design of our expansion, we partnered with Gensler, a company that understands how we work, and how architecture can support and reflect some of our core values: integrity in the work; honesty in materials; transparency in our methods; and celebration of our solutions.
Place and space matter.
The Innovation Center is a story-telling space. Experiential learning methods and outcomes are demonstrated and displayed as a way to understand, communicate, and develop ideas. The new space will reflect our working methods and add additional capacity for new projects, and educational offerings, as well as creating presentation and exhibition spaces, to help knit the campus together.
A space that empowers.
UIC is a significant provider of talent showcasing the work and accomplishments our students, faculty, and corporate partners do together will be magnified through a facility that supports our goals, methods, and outcomes.
Reimagining the future.
Change happens, all of the time. We approach our work with a mindset that constant evolution is the only way to advance in the world we inhabit. Improving our ability to enhance collaboration, bringing different disciplines and viewpoints together, and expanding exposure to ideas will increase UIC’s ability to change the future.
How We Work
Partner History
Our partners range a variety of industries and have unique needs. Through our proven process we are able to approach, understand, and innovate around complex problems for our partners.

A graphic of logos representing the Innovation Center’s partner history. CityTech, Intuitive, UIC Provost: 2019-2020
The partners represented: OSF HealthCare, Caterpillar, Baxter, BMW, Wilson, USG, Cigna, KIA, Morningstar, Dunkin Donuts, Phonak, Cricket, Herman Miller, Red Box, Motorolla.
Our Offerings
The Innovation Center works to bridge higher education with industry partners and commercialization through classes, sponsored labs, and consulting projects.
Classes
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About IXD
Interdisciplinary (X) Development is an interdisciplinary innovation curriculum allowing students to practice their skills in an educational hybrid: the exploratory setting of a classroom with the real-world experience of working with a corporate partner. Our classes apply innovation to a variety of problem areas—products, services, systems, and experiences. X represents any one of these problem areas, depending on the identified need.
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Partner Benefits
Students provide fresh perspectives and are unencumbered by traditional mindsets. Multidisciplinary teams deliver human-centered views on entrenched problems, hypothesize solutions, build interventions, and test them with stakeholders. The broad range of research and solutions from five to six multidisciplinary teams is the point of value for our partners.
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Student Learning Outcomes
Students will gain experience working with professionals on a real problem. Teams will be exposed to the full range of problem solving through design-thinking, a structured approach that provides definition to the process of innovation. Students will learn how to approach problems from a human centered perspective and work collaboratively with a multidisciplinary team.
An IXD Class

Corporate Labs
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About
Our interdisciplinary corporate labs are what drive exploratory development at the Innovation Center. Small teams of dedicated student employees and advising faculty work collaboratively on longer-term projects. Each lab has a unique focus and uses design thinking tools and methods to identify needs, generate new ideas, and develop prototypes.
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Partner Benefits
Labs are a more dedicated environment for projects to fully develop. Each lab team concentrates on a focused problem, bringing fresh perspectives and the ability to do high-level research. As members of a research university, lab teams are able to fully utilize their access to resources and subject matter experts, and work alongside dedicated faculty.
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Student Learning Outcomes
Students will gain paid professional experience through working with corporate partners, advising faculty, and interdisciplinary team members. Through the scope of a project, students will learn and implement user research techniques, prototyping and testing methods, and presentation skills.
click through to view our corporate innovation labs





Corporate Innovation Labs
Click through to see the current corporate innovation labs at the Innovation Center.
OSF HealthCare Lab
The Order of St. Francis HealthCare (OSF) lab and Little Company of Mary (LCM) are comprised of over 150 primary care and specialist offices and series in Illinois and Michigan. OSF/LCM focus on both rural and urban challenges in providing care to the underserved. OSF/LCM is driven by a mission to rethink how care may be provided to those most in need and applies transformative approaches to new models of care and proactive intervention strategies. The lab hires both undergraduate and graduate students from multiple disciplines: public health, business, design, computer science, and medicine.
OSF HealthCare Lab
The Order of St. Francis HealthCare (OSF) lab and Little Company of Mary (LCM) are comprised of over 150 primary care and specialist offices and series in Illinois and Michigan. OSF/LCM focus on both rural and urban challenges in providing care to the underserved. OSF/LCM is driven by a mission to rethink how care may be provided to those most in need and applies transformative approaches to new models of care and proactive intervention strategies. The lab hires both undergraduate and graduate students from multiple disciplines: public health, business, design, computer science, and medicine.
CAT Lab
The Caterpillar (CAT) lab supports a wide variety of innovation initiatives for Caterpillar. Broadly, CAT is interested in how to apply machine-data into a needed and valued product for their customers. Student teams have developed service-strategy solutions for quarry and aggregate sites; designed, built, and tested safety wearable products; designed methods to maximize machine usage on large highway construction sites; and developed machine learning techniques to predict machine activity with accelerometer data. The CAT lab is a fully multidisciplinary lab, with undergraduate and graduate students from computer science, design, management information systems, business, and mechanical engineering.
CAT Lab
The Caterpillar (CAT) lab supports a wide variety of innovation initiatives for Caterpillar. Broadly, CAT is interested in how to apply machine-data into a needed and valued product for their customers. Student teams have developed service-strategy solutions for quarry and aggregate sites; designed, built, and tested safety wearable products; designed methods to maximize machine usage on large highway construction sites; and developed machine learning techniques to predict machine activity with accelerometer data. The CAT lab is a fully multidisciplinary lab, with undergraduate and graduate students from computer science, design, management information systems, business, and mechanical engineering.
Medical Labs
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About
Our medical are focused on medical devices and services, with the college of medicine. Teams of dedicated student employees and advising faculty work within multidisciplinary teams on medical challenges brought to the lab by clinicians. The lab assesses the needs and viability of proposals before moving into solution development. Teams move though observational research, concept development, and prototyping, in an effort to bring products to potential commercial partners. See an example of an ORBIT Lab project, published in the Journal of Medical Engineering and Technology.
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Partner Benefits
Medical labs are a resource for a variety of clinicians who are dissatisfied with current methods, tools, processes, or communication approaches. Our distinct medical labs concentrate on surgical tools and methods, urological devices, ophthalmology tools, and health applications to improve communication between providers and patients.
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Student Learning Outcomes
Students from multiple disciplines learn to work in teams to solve problems in very unfamiliar territory. Often, radically new approaches are developed by teams that approach problems from a distinctly non-medical point of view. Insights from the uninitiated allow for new ways to think through problems, or bring adjacent arenas into the solution development.
click through to view our university innovation labs





University Innovation Labs
Click through to see the current university innovation labs at the Innovation Center.
MAD Lab
The Medical Accelerator for Devices (MAD) lab selects proposals from UIC medical practitioners that have high potential to solve specific medical problems. The multidisciplinary team validates the need through research and takes the solution through the design development cycle. Innovation has covered a broad spectrum of medical problems ranging from neurology to gynecology to stroke rehabilitation. Our goal is to develop proof of concept prototypes with an in-depth market analysis for further development with industry partners.
Learn More About the MAD LabUR* Lab
The Department of Urology at UIC is a world leader in medical device innovation. Combining faculty from the Colleges of Medicine, Engineering, Design, and Business in UIC’s unique Innovation Center, the UIC Department of Urology creates new real-world solutions to life challenging medical problems. Through licensing of intellectual property generated by the lab, UR* Lab is designed to generate self-supporting revenue in five years. Prototypes created by students and faculty in the Innovation Center and tested in real-world settings demonstrate to investors the significant value of this intellectual property.
ORBIT Lab
Ophthalmic Research in Bioengineering, Innovation, and Technology (ORBIT) lab works intimately with UIC physicians and researchers within the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences to uncover hidden needs and develop appropriate solutions through device design. Influenced by the other successful medical device design labs at the Innovation Center, ORBIT lab has developed its own customized process and timeline, focusing on the generation of functional prototypes and intellectual property.
Learn More About the ORBIT LabHAL Lab
The Healthcare Application Lab (HAL) is a new project-focused lab, concentrating on the research, design, and development of healthcare applications for digital devices. In partnership with the College of Medicine, HAL provides opportunities for improving health outcomes through digital device programs used by clinicians for both procedures and managing care outcomes. For patients, HAL creates digital tools to understand, engage with, and adhere to care regimes.
Consulting
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About
Project Lab is staffed by full-time Human-Centered Designers (and UIC alumni) with vast experience working in interdisciplinary teams. Project Lab works with faculty on innovation curriculum development, internal development needs within the Innovation Center, and operates as a consultancy on projects for corporate and university partners.
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Partner Benefits
Project Lab has the capacity to focus on individual projects with a deep exploration into a specific topic, allowing partners to explore a project without the full commitment of a lab or a class. Project Lab members are experienced in approaching problems from a human-centered perspective and delivering innovative solutions for corporate partners.
Project Lab




Corporate and University Projects
Project Lab works with corporate and university partners. Past projects have looked at better understanding a health system’s catchment area and the challenges faced by the population it serves; establishing best practices and training within an organization to promote scalability; and identifying solutions to digital inequity within a specified community.
Curriculum Development
Project Lab works with faculty on Innovation Center curriculum development. The curriculum development has been focused on interactive classes, tightly linking steps and learning through the solution development process, and activity based learning, to allow students to learn through practice.
Corporate and University Projects
Project Lab works with corporate and university partners. Past projects have looked at better understanding a health system’s catchment area and the challenges faced by the population it serves; establishing best practices and training within an organization to promote scalability; and identifying solutions to digital inequity within a specified community.
Curriculum Development
Project Lab works with faculty on Innovation Center curriculum development. The curriculum development has been focused on interactive classes, tightly linking steps and learning through the solution development process, and activity based learning, to allow students to learn through practice.
Innovation Workshops and Training Modules
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About
Our workshops and training modules guide and educate practitioners through the innovation development cycle. We use a human-centered approach that builds empathy for the user, delivers insights, and helps us solve for unmet needs.
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Participant Benefits
Our offerings introduce participants to different parts of our process and how to approach big problems from a human-centered perspective. Participants will learn different skills and new tools depending on the workshop or training module chosen.
click through to view our innovation workshops and training modules




Innovation Workshops and Training Modules
Click through to see the innovation workshops and training modules at the Innovation Center.
Innovation Workshops
Student Innovation workshops guide students through different parts of the innovation development cycle. Participants learn about different parts of the process, how to approach them from a human-centered perspective, and put into practice what they learn. Workshops concentrate on a specific topic, such as storytelling, interviewing, prototyping, or pitch building, or build in a series of workshops to go more in depth on specific topics.
Innovation Education Modules
Education modules are discipline specific training that introduces students to the innovation development cycle. Students learn about new tools and techniques to apply to their discipline specific work and prepare them for an interdisciplinary work environment.
Executive Training
Executive training workshops guide practitioners through the innovation development cycle. They are offered in a one to three day workshop that introduces participants to the design thinking process, a six-week course that allows participants to practice new methods by applying them to needs within their organization, and an immersive six month design thinking partnership, custom designed to fulfill the objectives of the partner.