From the very beginning, students have been at the heart of the MAKE program. The student community at EPFL is eager to propose projects supporting society with a potential for a broader impact.

This category of projects is therefore focusing on systemic analysis, technological discernment and the capacity to contextualize a project (user needs, levers for impact).

Each project for society is different and will offer different learning opportunities. 

However, most of projects for society tend to offer the following learning opportunities to the participants:

• Synthesizing the state of the art of a given technology/problem
• Exercise technological discernment (to understand in which context a given technology could be useful and what are its pitfalls)
• Question multiple dimensions of a project to maximize potential impact (including non-technical dimensions)
• Entrepreneurial skills (navigating inside EPFL, networking, identifying stakeholders)
• Agile project management
• Knowledge management 

Each project benefits from the expertise of a group of coaches of the MAKE network and the guidance of at least one EPFL professors

The main objectives is for students to acquire the toolboxes they will need in their professional life to build up impactful projects by questioning multiple dimensions of a project (and avoid focusing exclusively on technical feasibility).

Projects for society are meant to last multiple years and a long-term vision is required to receive support from MAKE.

The key roles identified to successfully run such projects are the following:

• An EPFL Professor : endorsing the academic and pedagogical value of the project, more about the responsibilities of the supervising professors here.
• An academic coordinator : employee of EPFL, the academic coordinator is coaching the students on a weekly basis, more about the responsibilities of the coordinator here.
• Student managers : students play the most important roles in running such complex projects, among the typical roles identified in most projects we find: president/vice-president and treasurer of the student association, sponsoring manager, event and communication managers, technical managers of the whole project and technical managers of sub-systems.

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Here under are examples of current MAKE projects for society :

See all MAKE projects for society