Developed by Collège des Ingénieurs Italia, Politecnico di Torino and CERN Ideasquare in 2016, Innovation 4 Change (I4C) is the leading Italian innovation project based on the collaboration with companies, institutions and non-profit organizations.
During this intensive 5-month programme, the participants develop innovative and scalable business ideas and practical solutions to respond to the important challenges presented by the partners, that are always related to social, economic and environmental issues of today’s world.
As stated in this article by the online magazine poliflash:
. . . young people are invited to think as much as possible outside the box, but with an essential guideline: the proposed solutions must have a high, positive and sustainable impact. Sustainability is not just a fad for I4C, but one of the key evaluation (and validation) criteria, in its most all-encompassing meaning, economic, social and environmental.
I was selected to join the 2018 edition of I4C which involved MBA students from Collège des Ingénieurs Italia and PhD students from Politecnico di Torino. Today, the programme has expanded the variety of its participants by including PhD students selected from the best European universities and young creatives from the storytelling school Scuola Holden founded by Alessandro Baricco.
The participants were divided into groups of 7/8 people and each group focused on one of the proposed challenges. My group undertook the challenge promoted by Fondazione Agnelli regarding gender gap in STEM disciplines.
Our journey into this topic led us to the development of the freexme mobile app prototype. By leveraging the gamification approach, our solution encourages middle school kids to explore the world around them free from gender-based stereotypes, to discover more about STEM-related topics, and eventually interact and learn from unique and inspirational role models.
I was responsible for the prototype development. I used Android Studio for the front-end and Unity, together with Vuforia, for the augmented reality features.
Overview of the freexme app.
To learn more about the I4C programme, follow its Instagram page.