The Iovine and Young Academy launched a material science lab at the SoLa Foundation’s Technology and Entrepreneurship Center on Nov. 13, which aims to foster innovative thinking in young scholars.

Plans to create the lab began in the spring of 2023 after Verizon gifted IYA $1 million dollars to develop a toolkit for implementing IYA’s “challenge-based reflective learning” model. The model follows a less traditional approach to education by encouraging children to tackle complex problems through innovative methods. Class topics range from interdisciplinary design strategies to technological skill development.

“If you have a complex challenge that rings your bell, that’s really close to your heart, that you really want to engage in, and you engage with that, the engagement with a bigger picture of how you’re trying to impact the world will drive you to figure out how to connect the different components,” said Thanassis Rikakis, IYA’s dean.

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The goal of the material science lab is to take IYA’s learning model and bring it to the underserved communities in South Central. The lab will foster creativity while serving as a prototype for other institutions to implement the same educational strategies, Rikakis said.

The material science lab will take students through an 18-week-long course that covers topics in product innovation, material sciences, prototyping strategies, soft skills and more.

Kia McCormick, a USC alum, spent months helping develop the curriculum and will be leading the lab next spring. She incorporated recommendations from IYA students who spoke with kids in the South Central community.

“In really cool ways, we’ve incorporated what the neighborhood, what the kids told us they cared about and what they want to learn about, and we have given them all of the nutrients that they need to be material scientists,” said Malcolm Jones, the postdoctoral director of health innovation and a postdoctoral researcher at IYA. 

Rikakis said that a key component of the modern-day economy is product innovation, but a lot of high school students don’t have a path to participating in it. Especially in underserved communities, students face numerous challenges that prevent them from accessing the “innovation economy.”

“Inequality is not a result of a dimension. It’s a result of multiple dimensions that interact in such a complex way that [creates] systems of continued inequity,” Rikakis said. “Creating any system that just addresses one or two of those dimensions, you’re not getting to the core of the problem.”

In order to address these systemic issues and carry out the creation of the material science lab, Rikakis reached out to the SoLa Foundation — a nonprofit organization that provides technology programming and career development opportunities to South Central residents among other things — which he believed to be the perfect entity to collaborate with. Rikakis said SoLa has a “systematic approach” toward helping underserved communities.  

“Especially communities of color and kids here from South Los Angeles don’t oftentimes see themselves represented in some careers or product innovation. It’s first important to just expose them in a place that is accessible to them and is in their community to show them individuals who look like them and do this type of work,” said Nuna Atadja, a program leader at the SoLa Tech Center.

A driving motivation behind the new program was to foster inspiration among kids in the South Central community by showing them exciting aspects of material sciences. Jones said kids of wealthier backgrounds may attend camps or programming that help them to more easily see the connection between learning difficult subjects and being able to create exciting projects, compared to kids in underserved areas.

“You’re ticking away all the barriers to expose these young people to the fun stuff that will make them want to push through the hard stuff,” Jones said. “No matter what you do, there are things that you don’t enjoy. If you love sports, you don’t enjoy conditioning for your sport … We can show you the fun reasons to want to stick it out and do some of the less fun things. That’s our goal.”

The Tech Center — which is where the material science lab is located — includes a “maker space.” This is where students will learn how to use product-designing tools such as sewing machines, Cricut machines and metal CNC machines to build their own products.

Ayonnah Tinsley, a senior majoring in arts, technology and the business of innovation, worked as an intern at the SoLa Tech Center over the summer, during which time she helped create the maker space.

“I think an important part of a maker space for me is the materials provided in it,” Tinsley said. “I’m a big fan of scrap bins and scrap material … I just really love getting to put myself in the limitations of only using scraps and making anything I want.”

Tinsley said the classes at IYA are seen as unorthodox and it can be hard to understand their relevance. However, she also said she utilized many of the skills she learned in her classes when creating the maker space and sees the material science lab as an empowering environment for students.

“Once we can get them exposed from an early age, it really fosters their creativity, their innovation and their interests in STEM and material science, and can lead them to places like USC’s IYA or careers in STEM as a whole,” Atadja said.

By providing these hands-on learning opportunities as well as connections to innovative career paths, Jones hopes the material science lab will be a pipeline for kids in the South Central community to pursue their interests at IYA.

“This is an ideal pipeline for South Central youth to get exposed to USC without having to leave their own neighborhood,” Jones said.