History | Project in a Box 22

Our Story

Our team started in early 2016 with the goal of changing the educational paradigm of our engineering community at UC San Diego. Identifying the lack of hands-on skills in our students, we formed a team to develop self-contained project kits that taught students specific hands-on skills to complement their theoretical classes. Since then, we've launched programs, courses, research projects, and much more! We're still a young team and are always evolving.

Past Projects

Our Hands-on History

2014

2016

2017

2019

2020

2021

Prof. Nguyen is appointed chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Hands-on Revolution in the ECE Department.
"Bring the E back to ECE"

Envision Studio Doors Open.
Hands-on Revolution in JSOE in full steam.

Project in a Box Team co-founded by undergraduate student, Phuong Truong, and Professor Nguyen. Members of Divergent Engineering, IEEE, and HKN form the original members of Project in a Box.

Fall 2016: ECE 196 is created and offered to ECE students based on PiB kits.

Fall 2017: Project in a Box breaks into four divisions: R&D, Inspire, Launch, and Partnership.

Summer 2019: Project in a Box removes Launch and Partnership Division. R&D and Inspire fuses back together to a single organization, Project in a Box.

Project in a Box workspace opens its doors for the first time for members of the community to use.

Project in a Box continues rapid growth in membership, partnerships with student orgs, outreach programs.

Project in a Box expands outreach programs through partnering with the San Diego Public Library to host virtual workshops for K-12 students.

Project in a Box hosts first annual Innovation Conference and Competition virtually to celebrate engineering education at Jacobs School of Engineering.

Previous Partners and Schools

Hands-on Courses We've Impacted