For the past four years, the Innovation Center has been under the leadership of the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Innovation (OVCI) and is in the process of transitioning to the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research (OVCR). This alignment provides an opportunity for growth and greater impact within the broader research community at UIC.  We are in the business of creating change, so we approach this new relationship with open eyes, new possibilities, and great enthusiasm. 

We thank OVCI for its collaborations on many initiatives, including the launch of the Community Health Advocacy (CHA) grant program, ongoing support for the Medical Device Accelerator (MAD) Lab, administration and launch of the Sandbox Lab, corporate partnership opportunities, and support for entrepreneurial programming and the Entrepreneurial Solution Development (EXD) class.  A special shout-out to their excellent shared services team, which provided diligent and timely assistance to our staff. 

We wish success and prosperity for all the other OVCI units and look forward to our partnership with Dr. Groden and her team, exploring new ways to accelerate our work, expand our experiential educational goals, and engage with new corporate and UIC partners under her leadership.   

Photo credit: Andy Graham

Associate Professor of Industrial Design and Innovation Center Faculty Fellow, Kimberlee Wilkens, in the Innovation Center's Simulated OR space. 

The Innovation Center Faculty Fellow program brings distinguished UIC faculty to the Innovation Center to enrich its research ecosystem, expand faculty-led initiatives, and advance the Chancellor and Provost’s priorities through experiential education and interdisciplinary scholarship.

The inaugural Fellow, Associate Professor of Industrial Design Kimberlee Wilkens, has been a long-standing collaborator within the Innovation Center. In this new role, she will dedicate the full academic year to research and development at the Innovation Center. With the release from core-curriculum teaching and service commitments, Professor Wilkens will focus exclusively on advancing projects within the Center’s medical labs, advising IMED capstone teams, and furthering her own personal research, which focuses on user-centered design and co-development methods in medical device innovation.

Fellowships are arranged in collaboration with academic units and vary in duration. The program underscores campus-wide support for interdisciplinary scholarship and highlights how colleges and departments contribute to strengthening UIC’s research, teaching, and innovation scholarship. The fellowship program aims to establish a network of faculty leaders dedicated to fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration across departments.

This year, the Caterpillar Lab (CAT Lab) focused on strengthening its long-standing collaboration with Caterpillar and enhancing our internal capabilities that support current and future team members and partners. The lab’s current engagement is with Caterpillar’s Digital Intelligence Warehouse (DIW) team. This work requires large-scale analysis of billions of user events—including clicks, searches, scrolls, and other digital actions—across major Caterpillar digital platforms. CAT Lab’s capacity to work at this scale reflects the trust established through consistent, high-quality research conducted by students, Research Associates, and faculty leadership.

This year’s efforts were organized into two cumulative phases, built on the success of phase I, which examined cross-platform behavioral trends and identified distinct patterns in digital user engagement. Phase II expanded the analysis to assess how these behaviors correlate with various user groups’ purchase intent.

Phase III is the culmination of the previous work and also involved coordination among multiple contributors. The lab produced foundational analytical outputs and collaborated with an external vendor to integrate findings into the broader project, functioning as any other consulting partner responsible for a critical deliverable recognized for rigor and impact.

Collectively, these efforts advanced Caterpillar’s understanding of digital user behavior and reinforced CAT Lab’s position as a trusted partner.

Photo credit: Innovation Center

From left, Resham Patil, Research Assistant, MaryRose Haley, Research Associate, Amratya Saraswat, Research Assistant, Brian Porter, Caterpillar Partner, Samantha Melchiori, Caterpillar Partner, Roman Meshkov, Research Associate, Anurag Karnati, Research Associate, and Mark Hallenbeck, CAT Lab Director.

Tonsillectomy is one of the most common procedures in otolaryngology (ENT) surgery, yet traditional training still relies on live demonstrations and limited pediatric cases. This can lead to inconsistent skill development and added pressure for both trainees and clinical teams.

To address these challenges, Dr. Ari B. Rubenfeld, MD, Associate Professor and Associate Chief Medical Officer in the Department of Otolaryngology at UI Health, partnered with MAD Lab to develop a safer and more accessible training tool. The team developed a low-cost tabletop rig that simulates key aspects of a tonsillectomy, allowing residents to practice grasping, cutting, and instrument handling without risk to patients.

Under the direction of Kimberlee Wilkens, Associate Professor of Industrial Design and MAD Lab Project Lead, and Grace Dyer, Medical Device Labs Manager, as well as graduate researchers Pietro Bonato (Biomedical Engineering) and Rae MacCarthy (Industrial Design), observations were made in the operating room to identify where residents struggle most during tonsillectomy procedures. These insights guided a series of prototypes tested with 12 otolaryngology residents, whose feedback on realism and educational value will inform future refinements.

This clinician-designer-engineer collaboration demonstrates how human-centered, iterative design can strengthen surgical training, improve confidence, and enhance patient safety.

Photo credit: Charles Frisbie

Study participants (L-R) included Dr. Cedric Sheffield, Dr. Karolina Plonowska-Hirschfeld, and Dr. Claire Roesler with Lead Research Associate Alexander Twaddle.

Since the launch of Sandbox Lab in spring 2025, the Innovation Center (IC) has partnered with LARES and OVCI to provide access to technology and enhance learning opportunities for UIC’s student population. Sandbox Lab had a busy first year organizing community events, running workshops in Swift coding (Swift 101), followed by testing for Swift certification at no cost to them, as well as Everyone Can Create, an introduction to Apple’s suite of tools to create digital media. The IC hosted a cohort of 16–24-year-olds who learned to code as part of the City of Chicago’s One Summer Chicago program.

Spring 2026 kicks off the Health Access Lab, where interdisciplinary teams of Swift-certified students, led by research staff, will utilize Apple Watch and other health and research tools to create innovative app prototypes and other digital health solutions to advance understanding and improve health access outcomes that are particularly challenging for communities. Additionally, Sandbox Lab will launch a Spatial Computing curriculum using Apple Vision Pros to expose students to the exploration of AR/VR and MR environments. Sandbox Lab will continue to offer its programs to UIC but will broaden its reach and extend into the community, with the goal of offering CPS middle and high school educators and training instructors these valuable tools.

Photo credit: Anna Regenerus

A student explores immersive technology in the Innovation Center Sandbox Lab.