The Innovation and Design Engineering Acceleration (IDEA) program is a collaboration with the Pitt Innovation Institute. IDEA projects are the younger but bigger sibling to XProjects in which students are paid to work alongside I&E staff in product design. The goal is to assist Pitt in creating startups and technology licenses while teaching students about innovation and entrepreneurship. Project work focusses on advancing an invention from a Pitt research lab to a real product prototype, thereby moving it a step closer to commercialization.