The Future of UIF

The UIF team is pleased to announce that, as of February 24, 2025, the UIF program is moving to a new home at the DesignLab at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. 

Looking back

The UIF program was created in 2012 as part of the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation (Epicenter), a five-year National Science Foundation grant hosted by Stanford University and nonprofit VentureWell. In 2016, the program was adopted by the Stanford d.school. 

Our team has spent the last decade working to transform the program to meet the challenges and opportunities in this changing world. Since the program’s inception, we’ve trained more than 3,300 Fellows; we’ve held more than a dozen massive UIF Meetups in the U.S., UAE, India, and the Netherlands; we published this community’s accomplishments in a book and several journals; and we persisted alongside all of you through a global pandemic.

It’s time for the UIF team to tackle new challenges, and to give the program an opportunity to grow in new and exciting directions. 

Looking ahead

We are thrilled that our longtime partners at DesignLab University of Twente will guide the UIF program in the years to come. We couldn’t have asked for a more exciting place for the program to continue evolving.

The University of Twente is a natural new center of gravity for the program. UIF has always been a place where change is created for students, by students, and Twente has student-centrism baked into its DNA. DesignLab, widely known as an ecosystem for transdisciplinary collaboration and innovation, has been the home base for 60 Fellows in the past 8 years, making it one of our longest collaborators in UIF.

Twente was the host of the 2024 UIF Meetup as well as several UIF European Meetups, which many of you have attended. Miriam Iliohan, co-founder and Manager at DesignLab, has been a leader in the UIF faculty champion community for many years. 

To schools in Europe: you now have a closer home base for your UIF efforts. To schools in the U.S. and around the world: we are excited by the endless learning possibilities offered by European institutions of higher learning.

What’s next?

The program team will work with Twente this year as advisors, and many members of our UIF alumni community will be serving as mentors.

Our friends at Twente’s DesignLab will share more details soon about what to expect this year. In short, the application cycle will not change — it will just be hosted by DesignLab. UIF application is now open (register here!), the cost will be the same and online training will take place in the Fall. For current Fellows, Twente will host the 2025 Meetup this spring, just like in 2024, and will host future Meetups as well.

If you have any questions regarding the next cohort, please reach out to Nicole Wright, who will lead the program at Twente.