IDEA Lab

The Innovation and Design Engineering Accelerator (IDEA) Lab was created to serve critical needs to help meet the research and education missions of the University of Pittsburgh and the Swanson School of Engineering (SSOE). It acts as a service center for researchers from across the university for designing, fabricating, and further developing hardware, software, and mobile application prototypes in support of research, including tools needed to perform the research itself as well as prototypes that meet commercialization milestones stemming from translational research. The lab excels at co-design, human-centered design, and design thinking approaches and implements those ideas across a wide range of fabrication domains including additive manufacturing, soft materials molding and forming, classical machining, electronics, embedded microcontrollers, software, and mobile applications.

We work closely with individual faculty and with organizations across campus, such as the Clinical and Translational Science Institute and the Office of Innovation & Entrepreneurship to help researchers transform scientific research into societal impact.

Furthermore, the lab serves as a living experiential laboratory in which students can explore innovation and entrepreneurship through internships and volunteer project work (XProjects). Students are provided skills for and are encouraged to become entrepreneurial leads on technologies developed in the IDEA Lab.