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So Mojtahedi couldn\u2019t believe his luck when he had the opportunity to visit Google\u2019s headquarters and talk to Pferdt, co-founder of Google\u2019s collaboration hub, The Garage. Their discussion happened thanks to a national program that teaches student entrepreneurs to cultivate innovation at their campuses.<\/p>\n
Along with eight other UW-Milwaukee students, Mojtahedi has trained as a University Innovation (UI) Fellow in a program funded by the National Science Foundation\u2019s National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation. Trained by Stanford University and VentureWell, a national student inventor\u2019s organization, UI Fellows host activities on their own campuses to foster an alliance of student innovators.<\/p>\n
Mojtahedi and his wife, fellow doctoral student Tahereh Hosseini, are developing software that helps designers get the most creativity from their spaces.<\/p>\n
\u201cPferdt said he had been experimenting a lot with [Google\u2019s] space, moving the location of food and furniture around, but if someone could quantify those aspects, it would remove the guesswork and take it to the next level,\u201d said Mojtahedi. \u201cWhen he told me that, I was so golden.\u201d<\/p>\n
With a prototype currently under construction, he and Hosseini are now turning their attention to spreading the innovation gospel as UI Fellows.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe UI Fellows are building a network of campus makers and doers \u2013 a community of practice that applies their education to projects important to them,\u201d said Engineering Associate Professor Ilya Avdeev, who has been a leading advocate of entrepreneurship at UW-Milwaukee.<\/p>\n
Three UW-Milwaukee students were among the first to go through the 4-year-old program, which has now turned out more than 500 fellows nationwide. UW-Milwaukee fellows have hosted activities such as student startup pitches to an online audience of investors and business executives, and fast-paced, design-brainstorming workshops so popular at UW-Milwaukee that the fellows were invited to stage one at UW-Madison\u2019s School of Human Ecology.<\/p>\n
![\"Nicole](\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2016\/03\/NicoleGree_vertical.jpg\")