The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Platform consists of the Tongji-MIT City Science Lab @ Shanghai, FABLAB O, New Centre of Contemporary Jewellery and Design Culture, Tongji Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability (DESIS) Lab and Nice 2035 Future Living Lab.

Focusing on the future of sustainable lifestyles and industrial transformation, the Tongji-MIT City Science Lab @ Shanghai works closely with industrial partners in key areas such as urban transportation, smart living, and community building to explore the potential of experimental teaching in innovative transformation, to promote innovative teaching, research and development, and to contribute to the construction of the ‘Four-News Economy’ and the Global Centre for Science and Innovation in Shanghai. The Lab currently conducts joint research with MIT under Innovation Programs to explore the future of urban mobility and sustainable community living through the modelling and analysis of large-scale data to support innovation and transformation in design, technology and industry.

Tongji-MIT City Science Lab @ Shanghai

The Open Creation Lab FABLAB O aims to create a theoretical and practical highland of design innovation, guide the development of other modules through top-level design thinking, and keep seeking output in the maker and industrial practice. The lab is led by Associate Professor Ding Junfeng and Associate Professor Mo Jiao, focusing on in-depth expansion of design thinking research and the lab’s potential for creating and experimental teaching, working toward becoming the engine of industrial transformation and intelligent design and establish the brand of the College of Design and Innovation in Maker-developing and teaching. Through greater intensity of Maker events and design experimental teaching, the lab guides high school students, undergraduates, graduate students and entrepreneurs to participate in Maker design activities, thus linking teaching more closely to entrepreneurial practice and effectively increasing the output of the Makerspace.

FABLAB O

The New Centre of Contemporary Jewellery and Fashion Culture (NOCC), led by Professor Sun Jie, has upgraded the existing glass and jewellery design laboratory to complete the transition to internationalized teaching, improving the teaching capacity for international students, and further established the laboratory’s leading position in Shanghai and in China. Based on the rich materials and forms, the laboratory further refines the fusion of design materials and technology, enhances experimental teaching means in both visuality and rationality, strengthens teaching management, improves the technical competence and safety of the laboratory by introducing spot welder, de-heater and metal processing equipment with higher safety index, providing advanced condition for internationalized experimental teaching.

The New Centre of Contemporary Jewellery and Fashion Culture

The Tongji Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability (DESIS) Lab is a key member of the DESIS NETWORK, a global network consortium for social innovation and sustainability that focuses on sustainable lifestyles and actively engages in urban-rural interactions, community building, and innovative education through ‘active design’, contributing to design-driven social innovation and transformation. Open your space: Design Intervention in Siping Community is one of the team's main practical research projects, held once a year, focusing on how design works in the construction of urban communities. The event has become a branding project for social innovation practice and research and community micro-renewal.

Tongji DESIS Lab

The NICE2035 Future Living Lab is designed to explore future lifestyles making full use of the talent, creativity, technology and capital support from the University. Driven by design thinking, from the perspective of users and their needs, the “lifestyle lab” approach focuses on real-world challenges. Through a series of community-rooted, “small and interconnected” interdisciplinary integration and reverse innovation experimental projects, we promote the overflow of knowledge and resources from the university, create new models and new economies, and enable communities to move from the end of the innovation and industrial chain to the front.

NICE2035 Future Living Lab