During this year’s Future Me Week, the Faculty of Science and Engineering are excited to be hosting an Innovation Jam! The Innovation Jam is open to all students in the Faculty of Science and Engineering, including all undergraduate and postgraduate students.

What is an Innovation Jam?

An Innovation Jam is a collaborative event where a group of people develop ideas to address a challenge. In the Science and Engineering Innovation Jam, you’ll be able to meet and work with students from a range of disciplines and think about how your skills can come together to make something awesome. Maybe that’s a website, maybe that’s an app, maybe it’s something different altogether?

If you’re familiar with the concept of a Hackathon or a Game Jam, it’s basically the same thing!

What type of solutions will we be making?

There are three tracks are this year’s Innovation Jam, offering you the opportunity to focus your skills in a specific area that’s of interest to you. This year, the three tracks are:

• Health and Wellbeing: How can we harness the power of science and engineering to make life better for everyone? You can focus on any aspect of health and wellbeing, such as physical fitness or mental health. Maybe you’ll create an app to help create custom meal plans, or a personalised fitness routine?
• Entertainment: What role does science and engineering play in developing entertaining experiences for everyone? You might want to work to prototype a computer game or make a short film, or anything else that helps people to have fun!
• Enterprise: How can enterprising individuals capitalise on the power of science and engineering to level up enterprise activity? Maybe you’ll make a website or app to help run any kind of business activity, for example, a 3D printing studio!

When will it happen?

The Innovation Jam takes place over the course of two days:

• On Thursday morning, you’ll have the opportunity to meet other students on other courses, find out what the brief is, and start designing your team’s solution.
• On Thursday afternoon, you’ll implement your team’s solution building on your problem solving and development skills.
• On Friday morning, you’ll get your team back together to finish off your solution.  
• On Friday afternoon, we’ll celebrate the work of all the teams and award prizes and certificates!

We’ll give you access to great spaces to work, including computer rooms, break-out spaces, meeting rooms, and quiet spaces to think. If you want to work out of hours, the library will be open 24/7 as usual for your team to get together and continue jamming!

Do I need a team?

The Innovation Jam will be a great way for you to meet other people, build your confidence, and develop your skills in team working and communication. We’ll run some activities on Thursday morning to help you meet new people that you might want to work with, including students from other departments. If you already have a ready-made team before the event, that’s great too – just make sure everyone signs up!

Can I come even if I don’t know what I can do?

The Innovation Jam is open to participants of all skill levels, and even if you don’t feel confident in the skills you’re learning on your course everyone will have something to contribute. It’s also a great way to learn from your peers and find out what people on other courses are learning and how your skills fit together!

What types of thing will we be making?

You’ll have the opportunity to innovate in any way that you choose. Maybe your team will learn to make a website or app, maybe you’ll put together an information resource or a podcast? The possibilities are limited only by the time you have available!

Did you say there were prizes?

Yep! There’ll be prizes for the best performing teams in each track. Good luck!

Associated Badges: