
The Innovation Center brings together a diverse community of students on a variety of classes and projects. Students apply their knowledge to real-world situations, and engage in professional experiences by working with community and industry partners. As a student, you’ll use cutting-edge technology to solve critical problems and pioneer new ideas, pursuing your passions while gaining the skills needed for today’s industry and higher education.
The Innovation Center offers a variety of programs appealing to a spectrum of interests. Divided into eight main focus areas, each focus area features a range of programs to be explored.
Courses at the Innovation Center provide students opportunities to experiment with extraordinary ideas, technologies, and projects to solve real-world problems.
Project teams are created at the Innovation Center to address needs from the community and industry partners, as well as pioneer new ideas.
Aero Team

The Aero team is the representative and industry application student workforce highlight of the Aeronautics program. Student designers have the opportunity to participate in sUAS research and development projects ranging from fixed wing to multirotor aircraft platforms, to new and innovative designs to be used in our marketing/community outreach sustainability program. Opportunities also include UAS contractual based work involving real estate, orthomosaic imagery, custom builds, aerial commercials, and defense work. The team also supports student UAS pilot growth, offering IC UAS Certifications in multirotor and fixed wing endorsements, and Certified Flight Instructors to maintain a high level of training opportunities within the program.
Aquatic Robotics

The Innovation Center Aquatic Robotics Team (ICART) is developing two main products. The first is Poseidon, an agile, powerful underwater drone with a sensing array for water quality testing, 6 motors for fine control, and 4 cameras for infrastructure inspection and habitat monitoring.
The second product is affectionately called ‘Überkugel’, German for ‘over-sphere’. Überkugel is a surface sonar vessel capable of creating low-cost, high-quality bathymetric maps of lakes. Its unique pontoon design is powered by water propulsion and guided by GPS.
To learn more about the team, visit their website: https://blogs.svvsd.org/icart/
Entrepreneurial Zone Team

This team focuses on developing the Entrepreneurial Zone as it is a start-up venture. The student designers and Interns on this team create new marketing strategies, business operation strategies, test and teach the Mini-Certification program, manage the funds gifted to the Entrepreneurial Zone and make connections in business and industry for the betterment of the program and the students and community they serve. This team is in the development phase of the Entrepreneurial Zone and preparing for the growth phase as they experiment, make connections and use their Entrepreneurial MindSet development to establish this program and its reach.
Human-Robot Interaction

Humanoid robotics is a growing field and is used in various industries, including education, health care, retail and hospitality. Our team focuses on two robotic platforms:
- NAO Robots
- Misty Robots
Each platform is unique, but they share a lot in common as well. Team members learn skills in areas of:
- Natural language processing
- Human-robot interaction
- Coding (Python and Javascript)
- Human-centered design
Our Misty team is currently looking for 2-3 new members. Interested? Contact Chris Schmitz and Axel Reitzig for more information.
Radio Team

The Radio Team has been producing a show entitled “Tech Talks” which plays on KGNU 88.5FM out of Boulder. This show has been in production for over 3 years. Student Designers on this team produce from start to finish each production to include acquisition of guests, interviewing and voice collection, audio editing, script writing, photo production for show, and work with the radio station to ensure a quality production. The team also assists and explores other opportunities within the Entrepreneurial Studios to gather voices, other audio and perform translations into Spanish for productions needing this service.
Robotics Leadership Team

This team provides leadership and support for robotics programming throughout the St. Vrain Valley school district. It primarily helps schools set up and run competitive VEX/VEX IQ robotics tournaments. They also mentor robotics clubs at various elementary and middle schools throughout the district and provide professional development to teachers.
Skills and commitments for being on this team include:
- Commitment to meet 2-4 hours a week for planning and training
- Commitment to helping with 2-3 robotics tournaments (10-12 hours per tournament) between October and February
- Skills that will be needed but not necessarily by every team member:
- Programming with EasyC or RobotC
- Understanding of VEX/VEX IQ robotics platforms
- Familiarity with project planning and management
- Strong communication and collaboration skills
Opportunities for the 2019-20 school year will be posted soon.
Studio Team

The Studio Team consists of filming, photography, basic graphic design and support services to the Entrepreneurial Zone as well as other operations within the Innovation Center. Student Designers on this team acquire, bid and produce productions for internal as well as external clients around video production. Students are also asked to photograph events, produce photography for flyers and other media, conduct product shoots, and assist in the design of logos and other marketing media. Individuals on this team are self learners, creative, innovative and collaborate in order to grow their skills and work with diverse clients and groups.
Tech Team

The tech team works in an after school lab setting to repair Apple products for the District. They also do contract work for the community around various technologies. We currently have 22 Apple certified technicians that are employed in the Innovation Center lab.
UCAR Drone Project
This team is working on Project Canary. They are developing a sensor suite that can be attached to a DJI Quadcopter so that scientists from the University Center for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) can conduct low-level atmospheric research. The suite includes 5 gas sensors (NH3, CO2, O3, H2, CH4), a LiDAR sensor, a GPS sensor and a BME280 sensor. The data collected via this sensor suite is then transmitted to a phone app (also developed by the students) and, from there, to an on-line database used by scientists working in the field. To learn more, read this blog post the team wrote up for our great partner, Sparkfun!
The team meets Wednesdays from 3:30-5:15. Its main mentor is Craig Rahenkamp, a retired engineer who worked on submarines and satellites. The team is not actively recruiting new members at this time.
Students are able to join competitive teams at the Innovation Center and pursue specific ventures. Our teams compete against the highest levels of competition regionally, statewide, and nationally.
First Robotics

NREL Solar Car Competition

VEX Robotics
