SILAB - Social Innovation Lab

ABOUT US

CONTRIBUTION

Engineering Schools have been enabling students to develop the skills needed to identify technology-based business opportunities and implement them within new and established organisations. Many of these technologies bring new ideas that meet social needs, create social relationships and form new collaborations (Social innovations) addressing important societal challenges, such as climate change, ageing or poverty. However, these specific social challenges are still not being explicitly included at the core of many engineering courses curricula and, in general, on educational strategies at engineering schools globally.

 

Mission

1


Leverage the students’ creativity, integration with external communities, research skills
and capabilities to develop sociotechnical innovation and entrepreneurship.

2


Stimulate the creation of goods and services, which fulfil the needs of local communities
and communities in emerging markets.

3


Actively promote the cooperation between stakeholders, a social responsible mind-set, the
empowerment of local communities and business models that truly target world changes.

 

Vision

The Social Innovation Lab vows to become a world-wide connected grid of students, researchers, professors, universities, companies and social enterprises, which will promote solutions towards the well-being of the population in the world. We actively promote the cooperation between stakeholders, a socially responsible mindset, the empowerment of local communities, and business models that truly target world changes.

 

 

Contribution

The SILab involves makers, researchers and students from different courses who develop their projects under supervision of professors and specialists, and it encompasses:

 

A Physical/Experimental Laboratory


An International Network of Partners


Students' International Mobility Activities


A new Project-Based Educational Model


OUR TEAM

Our team comprises professors, researchers, and other faculty members from different backgrounds, enabling interdisciplinary discussions of innovative ideas and projects.

Testemonials

  • “SILAB is an amazing project which involves makers, researchers and students from different courses at IST that promote solutions towards the well-being of the population in the world”
    Ruben Martins

Partnerships