Stanford holds an almost mythical place in the annals of student innovation. The university has launched legendary founding stories like those of Hewlett-Packard and Google. It helped develop the Silicon Valley, the computer age’s greatest innovation ecosystem. And with its peerless research reputation in engineering, biological sciences, and medicine, Stanford is well placed to continue spinning out innovation stories well into the future. So, a visit to the university should be a pre-requisite for students who want to imagine their full possibilities as innovators.
Philip Edgcumbe, a UBC undergrad began his final year by visiting Stanford. He was there exploring the possibilities emerging from the labs of Stanford researchers who are working at the intersection of biology and engineering, possibilities which could shape the future more profoundly than the Silicon Valley has shaped the present. To understand what the visit could mean for Philip’s future we need to look at his past.
He may not have known it at the time, but Philip began preparing for his visit to Stanford when he was still in high school. He started by developing knowledge. His high school science fair project on the biochemistry of the brain taught him how curiosity and experimentation can turn a single question into a hundred others, preparing his mind perfectly for Science One, UBC’s unique first year introduction to university science. Through Science One he explored the foundations of biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics as an integrated whole, guided by a diverse team of professors who were also introducing him to the fundamental practices of scientists. In his second year, Philip entered Engineering Physics and began learning how engineers apply the fruits of science to solve world’s problems. He also continued to develop research experiences, expanding his knowledge of how science and technology are revealing the secrets of the human brain.
By integrating science and engineering, Philip was developing a mindset for innovation that encouraged him to be guided by curiosity and exploration while teaching him how to match problems with solutions. Then in his third year, he added a global perspective on innovation by doing something very unusual for an engineering student, he spent a year abroad; at RISE in Germany with undergraduates from around the world, and in India, as an exchange student at India Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, learning and living with students who are uniquely positioned to help India realize its amazing potential as a future global leader in innovation.
Philip also developed relationships, connecting and re-connecting with friends as he journeyed through is undergraduate experience. His experiences in India made him an ideal host for the IIT students were at UBC this summer for MITACS Global Link Program. And his host for his visit to Stanford was a friend and former classmate from Science One, who must have pointed out that the university’s stories of innovation have also been stories of connections between people connecting, like Bill Hewlitt and Dave Packard or Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
By Philip Varghese
philip.varghese@now-org.com
