Student
Innovation
Projects

Students officially start their student innovation project during their sophomore year. Although, from the moment students begin at UAT and as soon as they are engaged in projects and competitions, students start thinking about ideas for their SIP. That way, during their sophomore to early junior year, students have a short list of emerging technology topics that they want to investigate further as a part of developing their innovation.

Students must successfully complete their working innovation and present it to the UAT community before graduation. Ideally, students complete their SIP as they wrap up their junior year (around 90 credits earned), so that there is time to use the resources UAT offers to further refine their innovation into something market viable.

Students who have successfully completed all student innovation project requirements are invited to demonstrate their MVP (minimum viable product) at our end-of-semester SIP Showcase. We invite students, faculty, staff, family and the local community to join us in celebrating student achievements on campus and virtually. Students with market-ready SIP inventions are encouraged to pursue continuing development of their inventions in their final semesters. Some students are even invited to present their project to a private panel of investors, business owners and tech professionals for support, resources and capital!

Each student has within their respective major a group of Subject Matter Experts (SME). The SMEs, along with the lead SIP instructor, help guide each student innovation project toward completion through scheduled presentations, meetups, email, video conferencing and messaging apps. Additionally, students have access to events and industry professionals who can provide ideas and feedback on their innovations and Program Support Specialists who provide tutorials and one-on-one support as needed.

As a starting point, students can use a project that originated while studying in high school. If approved by a UAT SME, students can take their high school (or work experience) idea and build it out further into something that is market ready, innovative and potentially very interesting and useful. Pre-existing projects cannot be under NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) nor owned by any other organization.

SIPs must be safe, legal and not violate the ethical standards expected of all members of the UAT community. Part of selecting a SIP topic is determining its viable scope against realistic resources of time and materials. All students are required to conduct extensive research on "prior art," which is any existing products or services in the marketplace to avoid infringement. SIPs are working alphas that demonstrate MVP aspects—the technology is not expected to be polished and ready to be sold or deployed at the time of project completion. Also, UAT won’t fund a laser cannon particle accelerator to complete your SIP. Students generally use what is available in labs and what they individually bring to the project in order to prepare their innovation.

UAT provides substantial technology resources to its students for educational and creative uses. While students own the intellectual rights to their inventions, they grant the University a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use, copy, display, describe, mark-on, modify, retain or make other use of the student’s work. For full details of UAT’s intellectual property policies, please refer to the University Catalog: www.uat.edu/catalog.