Unite! Seed Fund: Turning ideas into projects

Even though I had various experiences with project management as Bachelor’s student of Software Engineering and Management at TU Graz, implementing a project within the Unite! Seed Fund was truly a special experience. Before we dive into my journey here are a few important pieces of information regarding the Unite! Seed Fund:

Unite! is a university alliance with the focus on innovation, technology and engineering consisting of nine universities across Europe. To learn more about the alliance, visit the official webpage of Unite!.

The Seed Fund is meant to be financial support provided by the Alliance for teachers, researchers and students. Therefore, we have 3 different seed funds one can apply to:

1. Student Activities
2. Teaching & Learning
3. Research & PhD

The Unite! Seed Fund supports collaborative projects within the Unite! community, providing financial aid for initiatives involving at least two Unite! partners, helping to launch projects and foster cooperation. The 2025 funding round invites proposals that align with Unite!'s mission of innovation, collaboration, inclusivity, and sustainability. Applications will be assessed based on quality, long-term impact, and sustainability.

The next annual call for the Unite! Seed Fund is scheduled to open on 20 January 2025. Detailed information is published on Unite! website “Unite! Seed Fund Practical Information”.

If that first part intrigued you in any way, let’s dive more into my story and experience with the Seed Fund in the hopes that you might apply as well.

The project I was involved in is called “Unite! Seed Fund Ideathon“, and it was funded by the Seed Fund for Student Activities. I coordinated the project and worked alongside my dear colleagues Milica Zivanovic (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya) and Luisa Cardoso (Aalto University).

The idea for the “Unite! Seed Fund Ideathon“ came to life at the Student Festival in Lisbon. It was noticed by SURE students that there are lots of ideas coming from students, but many of those ideas never become projects or get implemented. Therefore, we decided to implement a project to help similar-minded students meet, network, learn about the basics of project management, and write good Seed Fund applications. And that's what we did - we gathered 22 incredibly motivated Unite! students in Graz from 27 to 29 November 2024 and created four groups with interesting Seed Fund proposals.

Apart from the official session in Graz, the project consisted of an online session, where students had the chance to meet each other and share the initial ideas they applied with. Even though no one is a huge fan of online sessions, it turned out to be beneficial for the upcoming “offline” ones in Graz.

Since students applied to the Ideathon with ideas individually, not as part of a team, we had a lot of work to do for team creation in Graz. There were so many similar ideas but no formed teams - therefore we spent a decent amount of time playing fun games together and doing team building activities that ended up creating four teams!

One major takeaway for me was to ask for help! You don't have to and should not be doing it all by yourself. The SLOs (Student Liaisons Officer) Katharina Salicites and Elisa Hausherr were by my side in Graz and presented the Seed Fund, and the application, gave some guidelines and helped with great feedback to the group presentations.

Sigrid Weller, a true expert in business administration, did an awesome workshop on project management and taught various ways one can implement a project.

The Unite! Alliance is full of people with different expertise who are always willing to help – don’t be afraid to ask! There is always someone who can help you!

Want to learn more about Unite! and what is in for you as student? Have a look at the blog article "5 Exciting Ways to Enhance your University Experience with Unite!"

After three days of activities, lots of interactive workshops, good food, and an incredible group atmosphere we finished the Seed Fund Ideathon with four project proposals that will apply to the Seed Fund!