This class is about taking your research skills and amplifying them by applying learning design thinking. Grow your intuition and expand the research context from which you operate every day. This studio will introduce PhD graduate students to fast- paced and experimental exercises that lay the mental and physical foundation for transferring your knowledge and experience into startups, industry, academia, and beyond. This course is for Stanford PhD students across all disciplines to leverage their research skills and apply design thinking. By adopting a human-centered design mindset, students will discover how their research can lead to impactful products and solutions outside of the lab. The course focuses on need-finding, problem-solving in teams, and user engagement, allowing students to bridge their research skills to other applications. 

This course serves as a prerequisite for the ‘Creativity in Research Scholars’  program and is ideal for doctoral students eager to make a significant impact beyond their research. This course is most applicable for  those PhD students who have an identified research focus and have begun their thesis investigation.

CIRS is a two quarter program to empower PhD students to integrate design thinking tools into their research culminating in a personal project. We will teach the students on how to employ different research mindsets and approaches to enable PhD students to explore their research in new creativity ways. This program is meant for doctoral students that are eager to use creative practices and collaboration to create impact. 

Learn more about the previous CIRS projects here. 

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Teaching Team