INTRODUCTION
The 2024-2025 academic year was defined by tremendous growth for the NEXT Innovation Scholars program. While the relative headcount of NIS remained similar, the scope and reach of our projects and impact expanded significantly. Not only did NIS strengthen our position as a valuable resource to both external collaborators and the UC innovation ecosystem, we tested new models for facilitating projects and fostering leadership development, built new relationships and deepened old ones, and accomplished many exciting firsts. This growth was built on foundations laid out in the first years of NIS, allowing us to evolve while staying true to our mission of developing student innovators who create the future rather than react to it, and serving as innovation catalysts for UC and beyond.
This year, we worked with a record-breaking number of partners. From newly acquired start-ups and university programs to Fortune 500 companies and globally recognized brands, NIS delivered transdisciplinary innovation projects for 16 partners over the ‘24-’25 academic year. On top of these project-based collaborations, we also reached the significant milestone of teaching design thinking and innovation to more than 1,000 learners since the program’s launch in 2021. This Spring, NIS hosted our first ever NEXT-Gen Futures Forum, an immersive event that allowed guests to experience multiple possible versions of the year 2040, build from our growing futures research practice. Looking ahead, we’re confident these trends will continue and are hard at work preparing to work with new audiences already in the pipeline for the coming year.
This year was also marked with great strides to expand our impact beyond UC’s campus and the Greater Cincinnati region. We led workshops for graduate business students at Ford-
ham University in NYC and both undergrad and graduate-level medical students at Brown University in Rhode Island. Our students competed in (and in many cases won) hack-a-thons and innovation competitions at the national level. We shared consumer research insights and demonstrations of our strategic foresight methodology with nationwide audiences from numerous companies. Our media presence and reach also continued to grow with season 2 of the Undisciplined by Design podcast featuring an impressive lineup of innovation leaders nationwide, including the designer of the Owala Freesip water bottle and the Roku (among hundreds of other household name products), the global and US heads of design at Meta, and senior leaders at Microsoft just to name a few. Season 3 of the podcast will expand to include video and is currently being filmed and edited for a Fall ‘25 launch.
While pushing our boundaries externally, we also sought opportunities to reflect on and refine the NIS program internally. The recruitment and review process for our newest cohort was completely redesigned and turned on its head – rearranging steps and criteria and taking the team-based application challenge to a new level. This reflects a core part of who we are, to never be content with stagnancy and always strive for better. It’s this spirit that fuels our success and makes us proud to share with you the journey we took this past year and what we’ve achieved. We’re excited to unpack these milestones and success stories further, and look forward to more evolution and growth in the years ahead.
at a Glance
NIS students represent 7 different colleges across the University of Cincinnati
43
Students in the program ranging from 1st to 5th years
7
College of Arts & Sciences
27 14 25
Majors Represented
Minors Represented
NIS Alumni out in the world
18
College of Engineering and Applied Sciences
1
1
College of Allied Health Sciences
5
10
College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning
5
College Conservatory of Music Lindner College of Business College of Medicine
...people taught design thinking and innovation practices by NIS students this year
...Professionals, Deans, Scientists, Professors, Nurses, Founders, Students and more taught by NIS students since the program’s founding
5 Ideation Projects
4 Insights & Foresight Projects
1 year-long research project exploring 13 future drivers across 4 domains
4 New Teaching & Training Initiatives
14 Transdisciplinary Projects Completed 10 Graduating Seniors
13 Different Majors
6 Unique Colleges
During 2024 & 2025, NIS completed innovation and foresight projects with a wide variety of organizations and brands across industries, ranging from CPG to health and beauty, financial services, and education.
SECTION 3.0
Transdisciplinary Projects + Impact
This year NIS partnered with a record-breaking 16 organizations to deliver 14 distinct innovation projects - each with a unique objective and set of innovation challenges. Our work spanned several industries including consumer packaged goods, financial services, health and wellness, consulting, and education - exemplifying the versatility of NIS and our transdisciplinary approach. From creating and producing interactive media content to prototyping technology-driven healthcare solutions and redesigning the consumer experience with household-name brands, our teams did it all.
These increasingly complex innovation challenges leveraged the unique skillsets of our students and showcased their ability to embrace ambiguity as an essential part of the innovation process. Throughout the year we simultaneously broadened our capabilities and deepened our levels
of engagement with partners, immersing ourselves in the lives of consumers and the internal operations of partner companies. Our students spent hundreds of hours in the field – from riding in ambulances with rural EMS squads to washing dishes and doing laundry with college students living on their own for the first time. We tackled our first corporate strategic foresight project, deep diving into our client’s unique capabilities and the potential for new business opportunities created by emergent market trends. We also prototyped a new research and insights sprint approach that enabled us to efficiently work with 3 brands under the same client umbrella with an aggressive timeline.
Together, these projects offer a snapshot of the work we do to drive innovation and offer fresh insights for our clients and partners, all while helping us determine what’s next for our program.
NIS student Sophia Lammi participants in a foresight workshop at jump associates
SECTION 3.1
Insights + Foresight
Actionable, research-derived insights that inform front end innovation decisions
In a rapidly evolving world, organizations are challenged to keep up with the pace of change while simultaneously building a deep understanding of their stakeholders and the external forces driving change. NIS guides our partners through the process of defining user needs to make research-informed, proactive decisions about their products and services by using our design research and insight development approach. These insights, combined with our strategic foresight capabilities, drive innovative solutions that can be implemented now for a stronger tomorrow.
The 1819 Partner Insights Team in the Learning Lab after a sucessful presentation
The Future of BTS
Fall 2024
Global strategy consulting firm BTS engaged NIS to analyze the future of their industry and use strategic foresight to suggest new business opportunities that technology-driven disruption might create for their company in the coming years. Our team went to work immersing themselves in the broader consulting industry landscape and identifying potential “unseen” sources of competition and future disruption. The data and insights from this research were paired with the findings from hours of internal stakeholder interviews that NIS conducted with BTS employees to understand their unique strengths and untapped potential, ultimately leading to a set of recommendations for strategies BTS can take today to prepare for multiple possible futures.
1819 Partner Insights: Great American Insurance and Western & Southern
Fall 2024 + Spring 2025
This year NIS partnered with the 1819 Innovation Hub Parter Success team to deepen our understanding of our building partners’ needs and explore ways to maximize the value of their partnership with UC. We worked with Great American Insurance in the fall semester and Western & Southern in the spring semester, following a design research and insight development approach for each project. Both kicked off with industry landscape research, coupled with a set of stakeholder interviews across various company departments and functions. After synthesizing the research and identifying key insights, teams developed a unique set of recommendations for each company designed to strengthen engagement and optimize their presence in the building.
P&G Packaging Innovation
Spring 2025
Over the course of a single semester, our team tackled package innovation projects with three P&G brands in different categories: Pantene (hair care), Dawn (dish care), and Bounce (fabric care). Each brand presented its own challenge and application of packaging innovation, requiring a new level of agility and efficiency from our NIS team. We took an innovation sprint-style approach with creative approaches to conducting and synthesizing field research
and rapid prototyping of potential designs. They quite literally got their hands dirty by washing and observing others wash dishes, visiting laundry rooms across campus, and engaging users with low fidelity prototype testing to gain quick insights. This hands-on approach allowed the team to quickly provide insightful recommendations that were still backed by thorough, human-centered research.
NIS studenteds designed and facilitated a hands-on prototyping workshop for the Bounce Product Team from P&G
SECTION 3.2
Ideation
Divergent and convergent explorations of existing, proposed, or speculative concepts and solutions
Sometimes a fresh perspective from out side the usual channels is exactly what an organization needs to jump start the creative process or break through a sticking point. Ideation projects are fast paced, focused on harnessing raw creative thinking and open ing new pathways to explore what’s pos sible. Partners for ideation projects often come to NIS with an early-stage concept or idea to explore, or an existing product, ser vice or set of resources ready for a new life. We leverage combinations of landscape & ethnographic research, brainstorming, pro totyping, user testing, and feedback to gen erate ideas and concepts aligned with our client’s vision.
KMS / Goldwell Fake Out of Home Global Media
Summer 2024
Frequent collaborative partner Kao Corporation gave NIS the opportunity to pursue new creative territory with this project –the emerging world of Fake Out of Home (FOOH) videos. This project challenged our team to build new skillsets with video production and SFX, storyboard and prototype holiday-themed video concepts aligned with the voice of 2 distinct luxury hair care brands, and ultimately produce 6 FOOH videos for global distribution on multiple platforms. Each video featured iconic, country-specific creative elements designed for consumers in Germany, the Netherlands, and London. The team had fun leveraging the unlimited creative potential of FOOH production to create ice skating shampoo bottles on frozen canals in Amsterdam, transform Big Ben into a box of conditioner, and gift-wrap rooftops at a German holiday market. These videos were featured globally on each of the brands’ global social media channels just in time for the holiday season.
Re/cover System Product Launch
Fall 2024
Re/cover, a new brand and product innovation in the eczema relief market, challenged our team to develop creative strategies to launch the brand and drive new consumer trials without traditional product launch media campaign approaches. NIS analyzed media trends both in and out of the skincare category and combined these with insights from primary research with consumers to conceptualize 3 potential strategies for highlighting the unique benefits of the Re/cover system and track performance through metrics and feedback loops.
Fake Out at Home advertising uses CGI to virtually stage brands in real settings. Here, the NIS team has wrapped two phone booth by the London Eye in KMS branding
Yale University Hacking
Healthcare Sprint
Fall 2024
Five NIS students spent a semester using human centered design to connect the seemingly disparate worlds of healthcare tech and elderly patients in rural communities. In preparation for the 2025 Yale University Hacking Healthcare Hackathon, the team spent weeks immersing themselves in field research to build a first-hand understanding of challenges and potential innovation opportunities in rural healthcare systems. They rode in ambulances, visited retirement and nursing homes, and met with doctors and nutritionists at a non-profit that bridges the gap between food waste and hunger. Leveraging empathy built from time in the field, the team ultimately decided to move forward with designing and prototyping a technology-driven tool that addresses the growing loneliness epidemic among the elderly by reducing isolation and building community.
Hello Sunday + Sephora Media Prouction
Spring 2025
Newly acquired UK-based SPF skincare brand Hello Sunday approached NIS for strategic support in building a partnership with beauty retail giant Sephora. Our role came in the form of strategically designed fake out of home (FOOH) and user-generated content (UGC) media that merged Hello Sunday’s brand and product features with Sephora’s values. Several rounds of product testing and store visits helped the team create multiple creative directions for the client to choose from. After alignment on a final direction, the team designed, directed, produced, and edited final videos for FOOH and UGC which are expected to debut across the brand’s social media channels in 2025.
Spring 2025
University of Cincinnati Learning Commons
The University of Cincinnati’s Learning Commons (LC), a centralized location for academic services, recognized that many students didn’t fully understand the services they offered or when to seek them out for help. This understanding gap meant hundreds if not thousands of students could be missing out on valuable academic support. They deployed NIS to make recommendations for possible action plans by taking a student-first, empathetic approach. Their research plan included
multiple visits to the Learning Commons, benchmarking the offerings of peer institutions, and numerous interviews with students ranging from frequent LC users to people who had no idea the LC existed. By falling in love with the problem rather than jumping straight to ideation and solutions, the team developed a much richer set of proposed solutions with a wide range of recommendations to bridge communication gaps and boost engagement.
Program Director Aaron Bradley speaks at the 2024/2025 Futures Forum
Months of preparation culminated in the NIS team building a prototype then presenting their project over one weekend at Yale University
NIS
Futures Research
Research-driven exploration of macro trends, leading indicators of change, and the implication of multiple possible futures
A unique element of the NIS program is our ongoing practice in futures research. Each year a transdisciplinary team from NIS engages in an extensive study of forces, trends, and social shifts driving change and influencing the future of society. By utilizing strategic foresight methods and analyzing hundreds of timely articles, media, and other data from a wide variety of sources, our approach looks beyond traditional insights to identify multiple possible future implications across industries and communities. Each year’s research and forecasts are curated, packaged, and published in the annual Future Creators report, challenging readers to consider their own role in co-creating the future with excitement and curiosity, and new for the ‘24-’25 academic year were also brought to life at our immersive NEXTGen Futures Forum at the 1819 Innovation Hub.
2024/2025 Futures Report
Fall 2024 + Spring 2025
Volume 002 of the NIS Future Creators report released in Spring ‘25, exploring the future of healthcare and patient experience, the future of educational systems, and the future of entertainment.
Scan Here to Read Volume 002 of the Futures Creators Report
and
Current
In-coming NIS students attended the 2024/2025 Futures Forum
312 Research Articles & Media
The Energy Arms Race
4 Macro Trends 13 Drivers of Future Change
A growing demand for energy and the pursuit of alternative energy sources demands not only developing new technology but also adapting existing systems to new innovations.
This year’s research team analyzed... to identify... that shaped... in order to create...
Evolving Relationships with Food
The boundaries and definitions of what food can be and its role in our lives are being challenged as lifestyles evolve and resources are strained.
Forces of Nature
Society is witnessing increasingly frequent and unpredictable extreme weather events, forcing a re-examination of decisions and priorities around where and how to live.
The Paradox of Choice
Integrated access to an online universe is shifting society’s relationship with information and the definition of universal truths - simultaneously redefining norms and expectations.
41 Artifacts from the future
These artifacts include speculative scenarios, products, and services that could be coming. Interactive displays and immersive experiences at the NEXT-Gen Futures Forum brought the research to life in Spring 25 and will be featured in Volume 003 of our Future Creators report in Fall ‘25.
Teaching + Training
Interactive workshops, trainings, and experiences that unlock innovation potential and empower new approaches SECTION 3.4
In addition to client-focused innovation projects and future-focused research, the NEXT Innovation Scholars program offers educational experiences in innovation and design thinking that teach new skills and empower participants to incorporate innovation into their own work or daily life. Our growing repertoire of topical workshops can be tailored to the specific needs of an audience or custom built from scratch to meet a specific outcome. NIS workshops are interactive and hands-on, encouraging active participation and engagement from the attendees.
WBLI Design Thinking Workshop
Fall 2024
NIS continued a collaborative “workshop swap” tradition with the Warren Bennis Leadership Institute (WBLI) for the second year. As part of the exchange, WBLI led an Imposter Syndrome workshop for our students, helping them build confidence and a stronger sense of belonging within the NIS community. In return, our students provided our Design Thinking 101 workshop for the WBLI student ambassadors, introducing them to the fundamentals of design thinking and how they could use the skills within their program.
UC Clermont Dean’s Retreat: Strategic Planning Session
Summer 2024
A small team from NIS were invited to facilitate a session introducing department heads and key leaders at UC Clermont to strategic foresight methodology and exercises to jump start strategic planning of future educational offerings in response to AI.
NIS students discuss a strategic foresight activity while at jump associates
UHP Design Thinking Modules
Fall 2024 + Spring 2025
In partnership with the University Honors Program, NIS designs and facilitates a workshop for all UHP Gateway classes each year. This allows us to reach hundreds of 1st year and transfer students with an introduction to design thinking and innovation mindsets they can apply to any project. This year, we provided our “Innovation & You” workshop which encourages students to take an innovation mindset, one that can be used to think outside the box and how they can play a role in being innovative.
Environment Studies Workshop
Fall 2024
The audience of UC students that NIS introduced to design thinking and innovation expanded again this year to include 1st first year environmental studies. Our team customized our signature “Innovation & You” workshop to specifically address innovation opportunities and scenarios relevant to their field of study, further reinforcing that innovation spans all industries and fields.
NIS Student Eliot Harned leads a design-thinking workshop for University Honors Program students
SECTION 4.0
Beyond the Walls of UC
In addition to delivering innovation projects that add value to partners and creating educational experiences that build our students’ capacity for innovative problem solving, NIS strives to drive innovation and create impact beyond the UC community. This year we looked for opportunities to share our work and our learnings through new channels and venues with increasing levels of scale. Season 2 of Undisciplined by Design podcast released on Spotify, Apple Music, and multiple other podcast platforms in Fall ‘24, spotlighting influential innovators from Cincinnati to Silicon Valley. We also began production on season 3 of the podcast with plans to increase reach
through new formats. We took our annual Futures project to the next level by translating our research into an immersive in-person experience at the 1819 Innovation Hub. We were invited to present in novation insights and subject-matter expertise at conferences, company events, and prestigious institutions. Our students made waves at national innovation competitions, consistently placing in the top tier of participants and even winning a few. We’re excited to share the progress we’ve made in elevating the profile of NIS and the University of Cincinnati, catalyzing momentum we plan to build on for years to come.
NIS students at IDEO headquarters with partner Dennis Boyle
Season 2 of our Undisciplined by Design podcast was officially released in fall 2024 with new episodes dropping monthly. The podcast features conversations with leaders across multiple industry sectors sharing their approaches and mindsets for driving innovation. NIS benefits from a strong network of leaders in these spaces, and the podcast provides a platform to share their insights and thought leadership with a wide audience beyond the students in our program.
Keep an eye out for Season 3 dropping Fall 2025 on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more!
Season 2 Feature Episodes
Watch for Season 3 coming in Fall ‘25
How Instagram’s Design Leaders Invite Co-Creating and Digital Expression
Season 2 Episode 6
In this episode we had the honor of speaking with the global and US heads of design for Instagram. They unpacked how design teams at Meta create new features by translating physical behaviors into digital experiences, and stories of empowering their users to influence the future of the platform through co-creation.
Rokus, Owalas, and Robot Massages
Season 2 Episode 5
Scan here to listen
This episode’s title might sound like a mistake, but it’s not. In fact, it’s just a glimpse of the more than 1000 products that podcast guest Dan Harden - founder and CEO of product design and strategy consultancy Whipsaw – had a hand in designing. In addition to being an accomplished designer, founder, and inventor with more than 700 patents, he’s also a UC alum. Dan shared stories from designing and conceptualizing several products used daily by millions of people, including frameworks and mindsets to drive innovation.
Systems, Worlds, and Iconic Identities
Season 2 Episode 3
Another UC alum - Joe Stizlein, Executive Creative Director and co-founder of Stitzlein Studios - shared learnings from his 30+ year career of crafting iconic identities for companies like Google, Nike, and Netflix, and global movements like former First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign. His episode covers a range of topics from systems thinking and world building through brand identity to perspectives on where design is headed in the era of artificial intelligence.
2024/2025 Futures Forum
Since 2021, NIS has been steadily building a practice in strategic foresight and futures research. This work is usually shared in a report or presentation deck with specific audiences, but for the ‘24-’25 academic year, we had a bold vision to translate this work into a physical experience at a newly created NEXTGen Futures Forum. This signature event transformed the 2nd floor of the 1819 Innovation Hub with immersive installations that transported participants to the year 2040. These interactive displays introduced and unpacked four distinct macro-forces of change influencing society that our team discovered through months of research and the synthesis of more than 300 timely articles, media, and analysis of online activity. These forces created a backdrop for deep discussions about signals of change showing up in the present, and a vision for multiple possible futures – challenging audiences to imagine what their lives might look like in a world influenced by these forces.
Attendees of the 2024/2025 Futures Forum were guided by NIS students through a curated experience depicting the four drivers of future change
Forces of Change
Our research identified 4 macro forces of change shaping the future of multiple industries and aspects of society. Check out out the full report coming in Fall ‘25.
SECTION 4.3
Presentations + Workshops
This year marked another milestone for NIS - the largest number of invitations to provide thought leadership to external audiences we’ve had to date, ranging from Ivy League institutions to Fortune 100 companies and industry conferences. These invitations reflect the growing recognition NIS is receiving in the innovation space and exemplify our growing effort to lead conversations about innovation beyond the walls of UC.
Urban Farming Initiative
Future of Food Conference
January 2025
Student leaders from this year’s Futures Research project shared provocative insights from our research in this domain at the “Future of Food” conference hosted by Urban Farming Initiative. Their presentation prompted the audience to envision how our relationship with food is evolving and potential impacts on our daily lives.
Brown University Medical School “Healthcare In America “ Talk
November 2024
NIS director and professor Aaron Bradley was featured as a speaker for Brown University’s “Healthcare in America” lecture series, which focuses on drawing attention to local, national, and systems level issues in health policy. Aaron’s talk discussed the power of leveraging human-centered design in healthcare innovation.
Fordham University Masterclass
September 2024
In conjunction with a trip to the Fast Company Innovation festival, our team led a workshop for graduate business students at Fordham University in New York City. This interactive workshop introduced students to design thinking frameworks and gave them hands-on practice conducting stakeholder interviews to build empathy with users of a system or product.
P&G Global Products Research Tech Council Meeting
October 2024
Our team was invited to present broad insights on innovation practices and research approaches to a global audience of senior researchers and leaders from the Fortune 100 company Proctor & Gamble. We reviewed our project portfolio and shared some of the unique approaches NIS has developed to uncover meaningful consumer insights and deliver on our client’s needs for fresh perspectives on innovation opportunities.
MidwestCon Conference Session
September 2024
Our team debuted a new workshop on discovering user needs with industry partners at the 2024 MidwestCon event. This workshop aimed to teach participants the importance of uncovering the core needs or “jobs to be done” for a user or client before jumping to solutions.
NIS students lead a new workshop in the 1819 Learning Lab during MidwestCon
Hackathons & Competitions
We proudly watched NIS students put their innovation skills to the test at hackathons and design challenges across the country in multiple forums this year. NIS students took top honors in a wide range of competitions ranging from a future-focused mobility challenge hosted by MIT and Hyundai, to one of the oldest hackathons in the country at Duke University. They consistently stood out from their competition by leaning into the human-centered approaches to innovation and problem solving honed by their work with NIS.
1st
Daniel Vennemeyer and Team
1st
Motors Future of Mobility & AI Design Challenge
Georgia Institute of Technology and Tactile Media
2nd 1st
MidwestCon Future of Data
Arya Garg and Team
Daniel Vennemeyer and Team NIS team of Faith Rider, Jackie Cunningham, Max Kemats, and Charlie Harker
3rd 1st 3rd
Arya Garg and team
Berkely AI Policy
Daniel Vennemeyer and Team Colin Putman
Arya Garg and Team
NIS Student Awards & Recognitions
As an educational program at large public university, student development and success are always at the forefront of our vision and remain core to the mission of NIS. We empower our students with the tools to think differently and set the table for opportunities to stretch themselves beyond the scope of their traditional majors and college experiences. These experiences and resources open doors to new levels of both personal and professional accomplishments and recognition for our students. This year NIS celebrated several student achievements and awards, including those highlighted below.
Neil Armstrong New Frontiers Award for Innovation Leadership
Yasmine Shaban
Interdisciplinary Studies Class of ‘25
During her final year at UC, Yasmine significantly accelerated the futures research practice of NIS and paved the way for future projects through her work as a student project lead. She developed new methods for synthesizing data, ran weekly supplemental research sessions for her peers, and facilitated engaging prototyping sessions that moved the work forward
to new milestones. Her initiative on this project earned her the Neil Armstrong New Frontiers Award for Innovation Leadership – an honor given to an individual who has helped others within the University of Cincinnati reach their innovation potential. Her contributions to this project will last well beyond her time as a student in the program.
True Ventures Fellow
NIS student Yasmine Shaban accepts the Neil Armstrong New Frontiers Award for Innovation Leadership
Yasmine Shaban
Interdisciplinary Studies Class of ‘25
Yasmine was awarded a prestigious fellowship with True Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based program for rising college juniors and seniors focused on venture capital and developing future entrepreneurs with game changing ideas. Yasmine was selected as 1 of 22 fellows, from a global field with thousands of applicants. Over the course of an intense summer experience that included full time work as a UX researcher for the start-up com-
pany Hatch and a series of topical masterclasses and immersions, Yasmine worked with an experienced team of designers and researchers, many of whom came from industry pioneer IDEO, and received mentorship from well-connected leaders in the Silicon Valley startup space. The opportunity catalyzed a deep interest in strategic foresight and venture capital investing, and set her up for success going into her final year at UC.
Presidential Leadership Medal of Execellence Recipients
Mallika Desai MED Class of 25’
Austin Castle LCB Class of 25’
Each year, four graduating seniors at the University of Cincinnati are selected for the Presidential Leadership Medal of Excellence - a prestigious honor given to high-achieving students who embody the values of scholarship, leadership, character, and service. For the class of 2025, NIS had the honor of seeing not 1 but 2 of our graduating seniors awarded this distinct honor. Mallika Desai (College of Medicine) and Austin Castle (Lindner College of Business) were awarded the Presidential Leadership Medal of Excellence, recognizing their significant accomplishments during their time as UC students.
Neil Armstrong Moonshot Award for Commercial Innovation
P&G Consumer Packaging Team
Austin Castle LCB Class of ‘25
Miami Celentana DAAP Class of ‘27
Mallika Desai MED Class of ‘25
Arya Garg CEAS Class of ‘27
TEDxCincinnati Talk
Grant Kilgard
DAAP Class of ‘26
Max Kemats LCB Class of ‘27
Yale Miller CEAS Class of ‘26
Haley Potter CEAS Class of ‘29
Rosheeta Shah CEAS Class of ‘27
This cross-functional team composed of eight NIS students representing 8 different majors successfully delivered multiple researchbacked packaging innovation insights and designs in a fast-paced project with P&G in Spring 2025. Over 12 weeks, the team completed insights and packaging prototypes for three globally recognized household brands, Pantene, Dawn, and Bounce, each with their own specific challenge. Their exceptional work earned them the Neil Armstrong Moonshot Award for Commercial Innovation, given to a team of students who helped drive commercial innovation with a Cincinnati Innovation District industry partner.
NIS rising senior Grant Kilgard was selected to give a talk at the 10th annual TEDxCincinnati event in Spring ‘25. His talk entitled “Why Generalists Matter” explored what it means to be a generalizing specialist in a world that often celebrates specialization, and how embracing a wide range of interests can lead to more innovative, human-centered design. Grant shared his personal journey of interdisciplinary exploration and what it means to have deep knowledge in one area with a wide breadth of interest across others. This concept of being a “T-shaped individual” is fundamental to NIS and one of the many things that makes Grant so successful in our program.
NIS Alumni Highlights
Since launching in 2021, NIS has graduated 25 students into the world - each carrying with them the interdisciplinary approach and innovative mindset cultivated during their time at UC and in our program. Some are just beginning their post-university journey and the start of a new season, and many are already hitting major milestones on their professional paths. Even with only 4 classes of graduates, our NIS alumni are already making waves across their institutions and careers; we couldn’t be prouder and are excited to see what they create and achieve as they continue to embody NEXT. Here are some highlights from our recent graduates and alumni.
Mallika Desai
Class of ‘25
Mallika will be embarking on her first year of medical school this fall at the University of Cincinnati.
Austin Castle
Class of ‘25
Austin will be joining one of the Big Three consulting firms, Bain & Company, in Los Angeles, California as an associate consultant.
Cara Baah-Binney
Class of ‘25
In the Fall of ‘25 Cara will be heading to Houston to start her PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Rice University where she’ll be researching textiles and wearable devices.
Lance Entsuah
Class of ‘24
Lance is starting his career as a consultant with McKinsey after completing a transformational year of graduate education and cultural immersion as a Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing China.
Himanshu Khaushik
Class of ‘24
Himanshu successfully completed his first year of fully scholarship funded medical school at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Rhode Island.
Jonathan Raj
Class of ‘24
Jonathan completed his first year in the Engineering Development leadership program at AtriCure, where he works as a fulltime associate biomedical engineer.
Lily Stewart
Class of ‘22
Lily graduated from the Master of Science Writing graduate program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where she studied with a full scholarship after graduating from UC and NIS.
