GUIDELINES - What is an embryo MAKE project?

1. Quick description
2. Main objectives
3. Communication guidelines
4. Selection process and budget allocated
5. Other useful information

The MAKE program is supporting different format of project based learning. To see all the categories of projects, go to the project portfolio. One of these categories are the interdisciplinary projects, which are challenging projects pushing students from different disciplines to work together (including prototyping activities most of the time).

Interdisciplinary projects can be proposed by professors or by students. When an idea is proposed by a group of students, usually there are plenty of motivation (most important ingredient for interdisciplinary projects to be successfull). However, other important ingredients are taking more time to put together.

The idea of the embryo category is to provide a group of students (having a project idea) - with approximately one academic year - to strenghten their idea by finding the necessary resources and identifying the key challenges.

The embryo category is not accepted for professors since they have already the infrastructure in place to develop project ideas.

The main objectives during the academic year as an embryo project and expected from the MAKE committee are the following:

1. Defining the requirements of the project, this step is crucial and tends to be the most challenging for EPFL students. It requires to
   1. Ask the right questions (user needs, societal needs, any other relevant analysis of the needs or added value of your idea)
   2. Work hard to collect a maximum of information (most of it will be useless, some of it very useful)
   3. Define the requirements with details including a systemic mindset (avoid thinking in silos)
2. Ideally making a first rapid prototype (only if the requirements are clearly defined first) in order to identify key challenges early on. Rapid prototyping helps working on a first design, familiarize the students with prototyping and identify risks and challenges related to it. The idea is not to use expensive materials but to test if the idea is realistic.
3. Having a first contact with all the relevant stakeholders for your projects (collecting information and initiating discussions with them), example of stakeholders to discuss with can include:
   1. the different coaches available in the MAKE network.
   2. stakeholders (outside of EPFL) in society that could bring relevant information for the project, these are sometimes under-estimated
   3. the different EPFL labs/professors (and their team), with the right expertise. For instance, if a group of students wants to build a dog robot it would be key to have the support of the bio-robotic laboratory (expert in animal-like robotics). As the topic of embryo project is interdisciplinary, it is important to identify early - and initiate a discussion with - the different labs that could contribute to the project later. Having the support of labs from different faculties will help to credit students from different sections later on if a MAKE projects is validated. Advice : When contacting labs/professors, it helps to have a first sketch of your idea (can be a document with your requirements, first design or even the beginning of a rapid prototype). It will raise their scientific curiosity and increase your chances of collaboration.

In order to meet these three objectives, students mainly need to:

• Focus all their energy creating the substance that will prove their idea has the potential to become a MAKE project (technical reports with scientific validity and robustness, detailed requirements, collecting information through discussion with many stakeholders)

However this is not useful and even counterproductive to:

• Creating a team structure similar to a company (CEO, CFO etc…) or creating an associative structure
• Seeking partnerships/sponsorships with external companies/stakeholders
• Seeking to increase the visiblity of the project

All of the above is forbidden because it is not necessary when the project has no clear requirements and substance yet. Warning:

An embryo project is not a MAKE interdisciplinary project yet. The idea is to gather information and resources to see if the project is realistic. Therefore, adequate communication must be done to reach the objectives mentionned above.

Here are a few guidelines to follow for students managing an embryo project:

1. An embryo project is not an EPFL project yet, but trying to become one (the trying is important to mention to avoid misunderstandings).
2. You can recruit other students and organize meetings in the SPOT makerspace meeting rooms, see also the reservation tool. However, larger events involving many students must be avoided, because recruiting large number of students is absolutely not the priority of an embryo project. The idea is to recruit a small and efficient team of futur managers of the project (4-5 members). Moreover, big teams are diffcult to manage and it will simply increase the complexity in terms of human resources management.
3. You can present the idea of the project to EPFL labs and other internal partners (EPFL centers etc). However, presenting the project to industrial partners / external entities is possible under the form of discussion (collecting information) but engaging in official partnerships with written/signed contracts is absolutely forbidden.
4. You can identify the important roles of a futur associative structure (president, VP, treasurer etc..). However, it is not authorized to constitute an association during the embryo phase yet, again because not necessary to test an idea.
5. Interdisciplinary projects (and embryo projects as well) are educational projects before anything else. Their main objectives is to train futur generations of scientists/engineers/architecs to face complex problems and projects. However interdisciplinary projects are not supposed to solve global problems in the industry or in society and it should be presented as such. It is important for futur stakeholders supporting the project to be clear on this aspect in order to manage their expectations (students should not over-sell their project).

To be selected as an embryo project, you must contact Julien Delisle for an initial discussion. Julien will evaluate if the project has a potential to become an interdisciplinary project (by identifying if other similar projects exists already or not, if the subject could fit the criteria of the MAKE committee).

If the project has a potential, it will be presented (10min presentation) to a relevant coach of the MAKE network for reviewing the feasibility. The presentation will include a few slides presenting the objectives of the project, the timeline of the embryo phase (and further), the organization, a first initial design - if there is one - and any other useful information).

If the coach says that the project is feasible with the existing resources on campus then the project will be recognized as an embryo project for 12 months. The project will be granted:

1. Access to the makerspaces as other interdisciplinary projects (see this guidelines for more details).
2. A small budget of 1000 chf.- to be used in the makerspaces of the SPOT and the SKIL for the next 12 months (special order can be asked to Julien Delisle if something is not available in the makerspaces.
3. A presentation page of their project on the MAKE website.

1. After 12 months as an embryo project, if the project is ready, it will be presented to the MAKE strategic committee. See this procedure for more information related to the selection process of interdisciplinary project.

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