Four new students from Middle East Technical University have been admitted to the University Innovation Fellows (UIF) program run by Stanford University. Mehmet Alp Demircioğlu and Sude Özcan from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Irmak Ünsal from the Department of Industrial Engineering, and Berra Yazıcıoğlu from the Department of Sociology successfully completed the six-week online training program and became members of the 2024 cohort of University Innovation Fellows. Within the training program that was conducted with the support of METU Teknokent, the candidate fellows were mentored by program leaders Serdar Alemdar, CEO of METU Teknokent and Advisor to the President, and Assoc. Prof. Elif Sürer, faculty member at the METU Graduate School of Informatics, Director of METU Entrepreneurship Research Center, and Advisor to the President.
This year, a total of 164 students from 44 higher education institutions across 13 different countries are named University Innovation Fellows, a program in which over 3,300 students have been trained to date. While METU was first recognized as eligible to join the UIF program in 2022, this year, METU and Istanbul Technical University (ITU) are the two higher education institutions selected from our country.
The UIF Program
University Innovation Fellows are nominated by faculty members and administrators, either individually or as student teams, and are selected each yere through an application process. The candidate fellow students participate in a six-week online training program. This training program not only enables students to analyze their campus ecosystems but also aims to teach them how to identify opportunities for change in various fields such as innovation, entrepreneurship, design, and creativity. In the program, students engage in efforts to understand the needs of their peers from different disciplines, as well as the perspectives of faculty members and administrators. Then, they use the new insights and perspectives that they gain to design new educational opportunities for their peers. After the training, students begin implementing the projects they have designed. This way, they take on roles as leaders of change, both within their own universities and beyond.
Fellow students admitted into the program conducted by the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school) at Stanford University create opportunities to help their peers develop the creative confidence, leadership, and entrepreneurial mindset needed to overcome global challenges. Participants engage in a variety of activities, such as establishing student innovation spaces, launching entrepreneurship organizations, hosting experiential workshops, and collaborating with faculty members and administrators to develop new courses.
Approximately two months after completing their training, University Innovation Fellows share the current progress regarding their projects with the program administrators. University Innovation Fellows who can successfully demonstrate that their projects have made or are beginning to make an impact on their university campuses are invited to a five-day experiential gathering hosted by Stanford University each year. This year’s gathering will be held in the Netherlands in April 2025.
