Instructor
Erik Sander
The Michael Durham Executive Director
esander@ufl.edu
The UF Engineering Innovation Institute, in partnership with the Defense Innovation Unit, 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) 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.
Teams typically comprising 4-6 students will work on 4-6 curated projects, each with a DoD project champion with whom the students will regularly engage. These projects are collected from across the DoD before the start of the class and will be posted as soon as available. Students who are registered will be contacted by the instructor by email when projects are posted to get project preferences. The instructor will try to accommodate student preferences, but your top choice(s) is not guaranteed.
Fall 2026 Projects
- Soldier-Optimized Machine & Autonomy Teaming, Interaction, & Control (SOMATIC) / Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) Challenge
DEVCOM Soldier Center needs new methods and technologies to model and measure cognitive workload impacts of Human-Machine Interface and intuitively interact with Augmented Reality systems in order to leverage human-machine integrated formations that blend soldiers with autonomous and robotic systems. Soldiers who utilize robotics, autonomous systems, and AI are expected to not only control these systems, but do so while in the field and completing their own duties and engaging the enemy simultaneously. This causes a soldier to have a taxing mental workload on top of an already physical workload, and therefore depleting their proficiency instead of increasing their aptitude. - Trust the Source / Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific Challenge
AI Users at Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific need a better way to detect and mitigate manipulated or corrupted documents when using large language model Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems in order to ensure accurate information retrieval and prevent operational errors in critical and non-critical decision-making contexts. RAG systems rely on user-provided documents ingested and queried, creating a dependency on the integrity and accuracy of the source documents. This issue poses both non-critical and critical risks: incorrect outputs could cause compounding administrative errors or lead to warfighter safety risks. The ongoing challenge includes both evolving attack methods and the absence of mature, widely adopted mitigation strategies that can reliably detect or defend against document-based exploits in realistic, black box RAG deployments. - Generating a Chinese Strategic Perspective / US Indo-Pacific Command Challenge
Many China-focused organizations cannot consistently or efficiently understand how the Chinese Communist Party or People’s Liberation Army leadership might perceive, interpret, or react to US or Ally actions because existing analytic workflows rely heavily on uneven human expertise and fragmented primary-source analysis, resulting in misinterpretation, delayed assessments, and blind spots in strategic planning. There is a unique opportunity to use AI to synthesize large bodies of authoritative Chinese texts and produce tailored, transparent reasoning grounded in what the CCP actually says and does, rather than relying solely on Western interpretation. - Sustainment Shield / Army 13th Armored Corp Sustainment Command Challenge
Corps Sustainment Command is responsible for safeguarding and ensuring assets like fuel, ammunition, food, medical supplies, and more are readily available and protected and remain survivable, mobile, and available to frontline forces during large-scale combat operations. In recent large-scale conflicts (e.g., Ukraine–Russia), sustainment assets located miles behind the front line are being detected and destroyed with precision, demonstrating that traditional rear areas are no longer safe. Unmanned Aerial Systems, including drone swarms, are now one of the primary threats to sustainment operations, enabling rapid detection and targeting of logistics nodes. - Low Cost Fixed Wing Recon UAS / Army 2nd Cavalry Regiment Challenge
Recon, infantry, and additional front-line units, who perform vital reconnaissance and intelligence gathering, need better cheap, light, silent, and relatively long-range options to perform intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR). The Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Platoon drone operators perform deep reconnaissance on the front line, and have to do so while being undetected. Current solutions do not achieve the much-needed beyond-line-of-sight flight, distance, and non-detectability to complete their missions. The 2nd Cavalry Regiment is looking for longer-range autonomous flight options, with increased energy efficiency, and better control/signal systems that go beyond commercially available systems.
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.
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.