i4’s Toward Tomorrow Program –

Bioinspired Design Realized by Creativity, Collaboration, and Connection

Our goal is to expand the STEM workforce with an early, inspirational, and interdisciplinary experience that fosters inclusive excellence. Using culturally sustaining connections, students will envision a future where their voice is urgently needed for involvement, imagination, invention, and innovation (i4). Our program removes artificially created disciplinary boundaries to extend beyond STEM by including designers, social scientists, and entrepreneurs collaborating in diverse teams while using scientific discoveries to create inventions that lead to new careers, benefit society, and shape our future. Our program connects two recent revolutions by amplifying bioinspired design with the maker movement and its democratizing effects empowering anyone to innovate and change the world. In five years, we will create a program that will catalyze institutional change at the University of California, Berkeley, continuing our forward trajectory of implementing inclusive practices that will persist. We will disseminate a customizable, evidence-based program through a bioinspired design shared community that will energize students to participate in the discovery process where their unique voices are necessary to invent the future.