Instructor
Erik Sander
The Michael Durham Executive Director
esander@ufl.edu
Class Period
Monday Periods 3-4
Draft Syllabus
Registration
Departmentally Controlled and by Application Below Only
The UF Engineering Innovation Institute, in partnership with the US National Security Innovation Network, is offering a course that brings together multidisciplinary upper-division undergraduate and graduate students. The course leverages the most cutting-edge entrepreneurship education model to attack critical Department of Defense (DoD) and US Intelligence Community (IC) problems in real-time.
Innovating for Defense (EGN4932/EGN6933; Monday Periods 3-4) challenges student teams to engage with DoD sponsors and government contractors to fully understand a mission-critical problem through 50-100 stakeholder interviews over the semester. Student teams learn and use the Lean Startup methodology and the Mission Model Canvas to iteratively cut through the complexity of the problem, craft a business model and solution to meet the DoD/IC Mission Need and develop a prototype.
The course will be intense, and students should be prepared to dedicate 10-15 hours weekly outside class time.
The DoD sponsors this national program, which was initially developed at Stanford University. Over 2,000 students from 55 universities have evaluated 450 DoD / IC real-time problems. Sponsors report that over half the student team solutions are impactful or implemented in some fashion (see Success Stories), including 53 startup companies resulting from projects.
A student does not have to be a US citizen, and DoD problems are not Classified. No previous knowledge of the DoD structure is necessary, as this will be a crucial element of the student learning in this course.
For fall 2025, teams comprising 4-5 students will work on curated projects, each with a DoD project champion and manager with the students who will regularly engage.
Student learning will include the following:
- Learn and exercise the most cutting-edge entrepreneurship model (Lean Launchpad / iCorps) that Silicon Valley, Stanford University, NSF, DoD, and many others have championed.
- Attack DoD/IC-defined, mission-critical problems in securing our nation’s Defense today.
- Develop interaction and presentation skills with DoD/IC and civilian defense contractor decision-makers through weekly interviews of key stakeholders at multiple tiers in the command chain.
- Formally present critical workflow and outcomes weekly, culminating in a final presentation of the student journey and proposed solutions to an audience of DoD/IC and other stakeholders.
Example Projects for Fall 2025 (See hyperlink for more information). Spring 2026 Projects are being collected from the DoD and will be added as soon as possible.
- Secure Data Sandbox / US Army 18th Airborne Corp – Challenge: Information Operations (CYOPS) Soldiers who are assessing the battlefield and make timely decisions in combat, cannot maintain decision advantage and lethality due to the lack of a secure, real-time environment to access, verify, and utilize publicly available untrusted information (e.g., social media) without dependency on traditional data systems or lengthy intelligence processes.
- Obstacle Navigation Redefined / US Army 18th Airborne Corp – Challenge: Army Breachers who need to navigate and clear complex battlefield obstacles cannot reduce risks to human life due to the dangers and delays of manual breaching, such as stepping on the booby traps, and the limitations in autonomous capabilities.
- Modernizing Medical Mobility for Surgical Application / US Army 30th Medical Brigade – Challenge: Forward-deployed medical assets tasked to stabilize and evacuate casualties in large-scale combat operations are hindered by their lack of rapidly deployable, scalable, and portable treatment infrastructure in the vicinity of hostile areas of responsibility. This poses a direct risk to force, risk to mission, and ultimately affects casualty reconstitution efforts, which deplete aggregate available manpower, which can, in extreme circumstances, negatively affect the national security strategy.
- Spoof-Proof the Fleet / US Navy Defense Innovation Unit – Challenge: Tactical and navigation watchstanders onboard U.S. Navy and allied warships conducting routine patrols and surveillance operations cannot reliably identify adversarial vessels due to AI model vulnerabilities, such as model and data poisoning, sensor deception tactics, among others.
Application
Contacts
Students can email the course instructor, Professor Sander, at esander@ufl.edu with a copy and any questions to Ms. Lori DeLuco at ldeluco@ufl.edu.