IDEA Courses
Earn credits towards your degree with these courses presented by IDEA.
What is an i.d.e.a. Byrne Seminar?
Each semester IDEA sponsors a special selection of Byrne Seminars as part of the larger Byrne Seminar offerings. The IDEA sponsored Byrne Seminars engage with a renowned research center or institute where faculty across disciplines are working to push the boundaries of knowledge on a wide range of topics including food and healthcare innovation, future cities, social justice, and climate change. Led by the center's director, students will explore how multiple disciplines collaborate towards solving complex, global challenges.
All Byrne Seminars are small, one-credit courses, limited to 20 students. Offered through the Office of Undergraduate Education, these classes are taught by our world-renowned faculty who come from departments and professional schools across the university. Each unique seminar offers you the chance to experience the excitement of original research, as faculty members share their curiosity, their intellectual passion, and their new ideas and fields of knowledge.
Coastal Systems and Aquaculture Innovation
New Jersey's coastal location and its proximity to the largest consumer markets in the nation indicate that aquaculture can be a thriving and vital industry in the State. The New Jersey Aquaculture Innovation Center at Rutgers University (AIC) is poised to play a critical role in the growth of aquaculture. In addition to direct employment, aquaculture producers create jobs in shore-side communities such as seafood processing, marketing, transportation and vessel maintenance. Ancillary jobs also are created in professions such as law, accounting, consulting, insurance, and in industries that supply materials to aquaculture businesses such as outboard motors, plastic mesh and piping and fish feed.
This seminar is led by Aquaculture Innovation Center Director, Mike DeLuca.
Feeding the Planet: Why We Need a One Nutrition Approach to Food Sustainability
All that most people want is appetizing food to eat that is convenient, affordable, and safe. But, where does our food come from, and what are the consequences of our food choices and preferences, not only for our own health, but also the health of the planet? Join us on an exploration of a new concept called "One Nutrition", developed here at Rutgers.
One Nutrition is based on the recognition that food and nutrition is not only essential to human and animal health, but that human and animal nutrition are interdependent and dependent on a healthy environment and a healthy planet. In this course, together we will trace the path food takes from its sources to our plates and stomachs, stopping along the way to consider both practical and existential factors that influence what we eat, including sustainability, environmental health, economics, ethics, food science, culinary science, and nutrition. We will also explore the role of research and innovation in advancing the One Nutrition approach to feeding the planet.
This course is sponsored by the One Nutrition Program and the Center for Agricultural Food Ecosystems, New Jersey Institute for Food, Nutrition, and Health, and the Agriculture and Food Systems undergraduate program in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.
Integrated Dance Collaborative
"Dance is primal; the practice of dancing is basic to being human. At the same time, dance studies helps us understand how politics, economics, spirituality, and other study areas affect what we do, as dance artists."
This course is sponsored by Professor Jeff Friedman of the Mason Gross School of Arts based on his interdisciplinary work connecting dance and the sciences.
Women's Public Health
In this seminar you will be able to learn from the IWL Consortium directors and professors at the Center for Women in Global Leadership, SciWomen, the Center for Violence against Women and Children, the Center for Women and Work, and the Institute for Research on Women concerning the challenges to women’s health. We will invite Institute for Women’s Leadership Scholars Certificate Program students to present their Social Action Projects on Women’s Global Health. We will invite doctors, mental health practitioners, nurses, and women leaders on the front line of the COVID pandemic, to talk to our class about how to create greater equity in women’s health for all women and for BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color) women in particular here and around the world.
This seminar is led by the Institute for Women's Leadership Director, Rebecca Mark.
Robotics and Humanity
Robotics and automation are increasingly becoming part of our everyday lives We are beginning to glimpse the future with automated vehicles, robots in hospitals, telepresence robots, robots collecting trash and cooking food, rescue robots and farming robots. The traditional objective of robotics research has been to provide automated platforms that operate at high-speed, accurately and consistently, such as in the context of manufacturing systems. As robots are deployed in a wider variety of domains that are closer to humans, it becomes important to consider other aspects, such as safety, adaptability to human needs, and nuanced societal impacts. Robotics has the potential to improve the quality of life both at the individual and societal level. To shape the early stages of the robotics design process, we consider the following question addressing questions: How will these robots help people and society? What are the potential unintended consequences of this technology? How can robots serve critical individual and societal needs? How can costly mistakes be avoided in robotics technology development and adaptation? The course will discuss issues in an emerging field called socially cognizant robotics that considers robotics technologies and discusses how these technologies can impact society and individuals. The course will give a tour of six underlying interconnected sub-disciplines of socially cognizant robotics: (1) robot embodiment, (2) control, (3) computer vision, (4) language processing, (5) cognitive science, (6) public policy. These topics range from traditionally technical fields to those which support human interaction as well as policy issues to mediate robotics adaptation in society. The course will also discuss a new research program at Rutgers called SOCRATES, socially cognizant robotics for a technology enhanced society.
Climate Change, Inequality, and Social Justice
Climate change is an environmental, equity, and social justice issue. The physical processes that result in rising temperatures, changes in precipitation, and rising sea levels have uneven spatial outcomes, while the intersection of discrimination and economic disadvantage contribute to disproportionate vulnerabilities among racially, ethnically, or other marginalized populations. In this seminar, we will explore climate change and its equity dimensions through many different lenses. We will address physical climate impacts and social justice ramifications. We will also explore social vulnerability and linkages to equity, social justice and health, examining parallels from history and considerations for the future.
This seminar was led by the Rutgers Climate Institute Director Marjorie Kaplan.
Future Internet and Smart Cities
As urban populations increase, solutions to challenges in mobility, infrastructure, and housing are of utmost importance to society. Disruptive technologies have the potential to transform the way cities currently operate and the way that we communicate. Smart cities and smart homes are making our world more intelligent and more responsive as billions of physical devices around the world are now connected to the Internet. This seminar is designed to provide students with an introduction to the most cutting edge questions and topics related to the development of smart cities, the future internet and the Internet of Things (IoT). We will invite faculty and industry partners from WINLAB at Rutgers University to give lectures on cutting-edge topics and trends, including, but not limited to future Internet, 5G networks, smart cities/homes, mobile computing, Internet of Things (IoT), connected vehicles and E-health. Furthermore, the development of the Internet and mobile computing has opened up unprecedented possibilities in E-health and smart healthcare. In this course, students will learn how researchers and engineers leverage state-of-the-art technologies, such as artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, and data mining, to fuse the healthcare information of patients and provide insights into early disease diagnosis, telesurgery, and telemedicine.
This seminar was led by the Wireless Information Network Laboratory (WINLAB).
Road to COVID Vaccination: Exploration of Innovation, Design Thinking, and Healthcare
2020 is an unprecedented year. As the world unites to respond to COVID-19, this seminar will expose students to research and innovation occurring right in New Brunswick, NJ. In partnership with the Rutgers health institutes and a broadly-based global healthcare company in New Brunswick, students will engage with researchers and leaders on understanding the road to a COVID-19 vaccination. The seminar will start with an engaging talk with health community leaders in New Brunswick. Students will then engage in talks to learn the basics of vaccinations, testing innovation led by Rutgers, and addressing health disparities exacerbated by COVID-19.
We will then connect with leaders across the healthcare industry focused on providing 500 Million doses by 2021 while assessing the needs of New Brunswick. Students will engage with healthcare innovation thought leaders to understand how different functions ranging from Research & Development to Supply Chain are contributing to the global vaccination goal. This seminar provides an opportunity for students to embark on a journey alongside Rutgers health researchers, healthcare industry leaders, and New Brunswick community health leaders while learning innovation skillsets, design thinking and entrepreneurial approaches to solving real world healthcare challenges. Students will get real, hands-on experience and will have an opportunity to unpack issues that will help New Brunswick communities improve their health – potentially leading to a competitive paid internship experience in New Brunswick during Summer 2021.
Seminar Director: Hajar Shirley, MS
Special Collaborators: Johnson & Johnson, St. Peters Hospital, and Rutgers Global Health Institute
The Innovation Lab at the Honors College
IDEA and Honors College have partnered to open The Innovation Lab to all students at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. The Innovation Lab is an experiential and practicum course that uses a multidisciplinary and collaborative approach to teach students innovative and creative design-thinking at the intersection of business and social enterprise, as well as the practical aspects of launching and leading a social innovation start-up venture.
Any student can sign up for the course, even if you are not an Honors College student! Join an existing team or, if you have a bright new idea, start your own!
IDEA Student Projects
Check out some of the student-led projects from IDEA that have gone through Innovation Lab.
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The BabySafe Health app is built to be an all-in-one guide for expecting mothers to help them through the difficult pregnancy process. The initial app will contain a healthcare nearby feature that will make use of the user’s zip code to find nearby healthcare providers that BabySafe Health recommends, a symptom tracker for mothers to input their daily symptoms which can then be converted into a PDF to be shown to their doctors, a find friends feature for mothers to interact with each other creating a community, and notifications that can provide mothers with education relevant to the stage of their pregnancy process in multiple languages. Overall, our application aims to have a positive impact by providing mothers with more information at their fingertips and the appropriate resources to obtain the care they need to have successful outcomes.
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Cancer Community Connect is an initiative to help reduce healthcare and racial disparities through a web-based app for cancer patients from underserved communities. We work to provide greater access to personalized resources, better healthcare, and community support for cancer patients.
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CliMit was founded with one objective: to build a sustainable, climate-resilient future for generations to come.Â
It all started when a student from Rutgers University was tasked with creating a team for a national competition: one that the team would eventually be rejected from. In August of 2021, despite the rejection, Michael Panchery decided to take his venture and run with it. Panchery developed a preliminary concept for a web-based tool that would assist communities in understanding their risk of climate-induced disasters and planned to build the company out beginning in September with a small group of students. The first week, Hurricane Ida struck New Jersey and submerged the Rutgers campus in several feet of water. The first meeting of students was delayed two weeks as a result, but the storm provided traction for Panchery's concept, and, CliMit was born.Â
Within just three months, Panchery had built the largest startup at Rutgers, with assistance from the Innovation, Design, and Entrepreneurship Academy and the Innovation Lab. He had also met his future COO & CTO, Katie Sidebotham, perhaps by fate. Katie was a proponent of environmental activism and had strong experience in programming, which Panchery needed. The two built CliMit up to 50 student workers in one semester across four departments.Â
In reality, the story of CliMit is just beginning. -
D2R aims to generate connections between donors and recipients through a networking app. We aim to create an app that is inspired by social media apps to match live kidney donors and recipients that meet specific criteria as well as generate a support group for individuals who are going through kidney donation or who have already gone through the process, or who want to learn more about the process.
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We are building a platform to create and host simulated reality educational content, to change the way education is delivered to students. Essentially, Savant will become the world’s first decentralized education economy. Our approach is motivated with the aim to provide experiential learning for students, by giving teachers supplemental tools to help students own and personalize their learning with the help of AI.