Fiddler Innovation Endowment

The eDream Institute was established in January 2009 with seed funding provided by the University of Illinois Office of the Provost. The Institute was formed to serve as one of the University’s key innovation centers, driving creative interdisciplinary discovery for 21st century education, culture, and industry.

To help establish the Institute, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications has also provided essential support in the form of space, technical staff, business management, and equipment use. This assistance demonstrates NCSA’s commitment to computing across disciplines, which is also expressed through its support of the Institute for Advanced Computing Applications and Technologies Creativity and Computing, a research effort closely allied to eDream in management and mission.

eDream is made possible by the support of generous donors and projects.

The Fiddler Innovation Fellowship is an annual award supported by Jerry Fiddler and Melissa Alden through the eDream Institute. Each year, the endowment awards students and faculty at UIUC who shows promise of significant, innovative achievements.

The goal of the Fellowship is to inspire significant research projects that address cultural or global challenges that incorporate art and technology. Student fellows work alongside NCSA mentors and faculty fellows work with NCSA collaborators to develop their multidisciplinary projects.

NCSA has a history of nurturing innovative concepts, and some of the best ideas have come from highly motivated, creative undergraduate. The Students Pushing INnovation internship program provides University of Illinois undergraduates the opportunity to apply their skills to real challenges in high-performance computing, data analysis and visualization, cybersecurity, and other areas of interest to NCSA.

The Fiddler Innovation endowment supports the SPIN program by awarding annual fellowships to outstanding students for multidisciplinary projects.