Young Academics
25 students teams will be selected to join this unique and exiting innovation journey.
The Innovation journey
The Young Academic journey focus on turning concrete sustainability challenges, brought forward by partners, into inclusive and sustainable concepts and solutions that will be showcased at the UIA 2023 Congress. The students will be engaged in a hybrid innovation journey in the month of June, where they partake in joint virtual activities and development work at their local universities. 3 members of each team will then be invited to the UIA World Congress of Architects Copenhagen 2023, to exhibit and pitch their ideas. Travel and stay in Denmark is enabled through sposnorships and partners of Next Generation City Action.
The final deadline for sign-up is the 24th of April
20-25 teams of 3 students each from bachelor to PhD level.
On the 31 ist of May, we aim to gather all participants locally in hubs in their countries. We will then virtually connect all the hubs for a joint Kick-off of the innovation acceleration.
The first phase of the students innovation journey will focus on challenging the challenge brief and further scoping it to their context and background. At the end of this phase, they will hand in a Design specification, describing what part of the problem they will focus on.
The second stage moves the students from looking at the problem to begin searching for solutions. At the end of this stage, they will hand in an idea catalogue of potential solutions.
The third phase focuses on selecting between and specifying an idea into holistic concept. At the end of this phase, the students will hand in a description of their concept.
This phase focuses on aiding the students to take their concept and turn it into a finished solution proposal. This is the final stage of their development work, and their delivery will be a blog post describing their solutions handed in by the 22nd of June. You can see the blog posts from 2022 here.
After having developed their solutions, the focus will swift towards the UIA congress. This involves preparations and arrival to Copenhagen. The students will take part in sessions preparing them to pitch their ideas on a global stage and how to prepare for a fruitful congress participation.
As part of our youth delegation, the students will enter the UIA World Congress of Architects 2023, with a defined congress strategy ready to take part in defining the future of sustainable and inclusive cities.
what we offer
- Unique international innovation initiative which takes you from a given challenge to a presentable business concept.
- Grow your international network with leading experts, business mentors, and like-minded innovators.
- Develop interdisciplinary competencies.
- Build tool and skills on working with inclusion and Universal Design
- Collaborate with stakeholders from across the world.
- Social events with the startup and student entrepreneurial community
- An opportunity to present your ideas on a global stage.
- Fully covered travel, stay and participation at the UIA World Congress of Architects 2023 for three team members.
what you commit to
- Participating in a hybrid innovation journey, including joint BootCamp sessions and Keynotes as well as individual mentoring sessions.
- We expect that you are able to dedicate working 30+ hrs/week from June 1-22nd by integrating the journery at your university i.e. as a course, summer school, internship or similar.
- Participating in the UIA Congress and our preparation program leading up to it. Full-time from June 28th to July 6th.
- Openly engage in the program, supporting the other participants with your unique insights and knowledge.
Selection criteria
- University (Ba, Ma or PhD) student in Korea, India, Kenya, Denmark or Mexico. We encourage students of any study line to apply, innovation benefits from diversity.
- Able to participate virtually in June and physically in Copenhagen from June 28th to July 6th
- English proficiency
how to apply
The deadline for sign-up is April 24th. More information on how to apply TBA.
