Bas Verkaik and Tom Selten are well known as members of the student teams STORM and Solar Team Eindhoven. At the moment they are the pioneers of the new Innovation Space, the place at the university where students, university employees and people from outside build together on the solutions to tomorrow’s problems. In a weekly blogpost, they keep E52 informed of their progress. Today the introduction.
Hey there!
You’ve certainly read, heard or seen all about the initiative called TU/e Innovation Space. That’s why we will keep you informed with a weekly blog starting today about what is really happening within the walls of the completely renovated Gaslab building on the TU/e site.
We are Tom and Bas and we have one thing in common; we both had the time of our lives in a student team, where we dare to say that we have learned more than during our whole bachelor’s programme. After these periods at Solar Team Eindhoven and STORM, we are convinced that every student should at least get a glimpse of this experience. That’s why we are now part of the TU/e innovation space team, in which we hope to achieve this step by step.
In short, TU/e Innovation Space is the place on our campus where this new form of challenge-based learning is slowly becoming a reality. Challenge-based learning: a fancy word for a course in which you do not learn for an exam but learn because you need it to win a challenge.
We sometimes hear: these student teams and startups are only for the best students. Not true, we are not ‘top’ students at all, but just a couple of guys who like to build tech. We are going to bring together everyone who wants to do the same.
“We are not ‘top’ students, but just two guys who love to build tech”Tom Selten en Bas Verkaik, TU/e Innovation Lab
And by that, we really mean everyone: from software to robotics and from chemistry to design. Because we are not tied to a particular faculty, we can work together in an interdisciplinary way. As students from interdisciplinary student teams, we immediately saw the benefits of collaborating with people you normally don’t encounter at all. And, we must say: it is a party! (except at 5 a.m. after a night’s work.
Over the past few months, together with a lot of other staff and students, we have been busy redesigning Gaslab where we want to build that party the coming year. Twelve teams have started to work out their ideas and the first interdisciplinary courses have been fully launched. There are also all kinds of events on the agenda, in which everyone is welcome, of course, please take a look at innovationspace.tue.nl.
That’s the most important thing, we are literally open to everyone and that’s why we make an appeal to students, researchers, employees & companies: just walk in, take the Huub pass for a free MAAS coffee and have a look around!
Photos (c) Bart van Overbeeke
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