Far beyond the aesthetics and construction of designs, the Global Grad Show 2016 makes the largest student exhibition of products, solutions and inventions that have the power to shape and alter out future.

It is part of Dubai Design Week 2016 from October 24-29 at Dubai Design District (d3) and falls under the Art Dubai Group umbrella.

Alongside the exhibition, which is free to attend for the public, the designers of all the projects, along with representatives from each participating university, will meet for what will become the world’s most diverse design education summit.

Innovation for a cause

From a system that grows food in empty shipping containers, to a touch-based music therapy platform for autistic children and a night light system for the elderly and visually impaired, the works exhibited address underserved populations and demonstrate new ways of thinking.

The curator Brendan McGretrick said:

With each submission, I asked myself, ‘why does this need to exist?’… My goal for the exhibition is to give visitors a glimpse of projects that identify poorly addressed problems, provide new tools, and demonstrate new ways of thinking.

Some exciting examples of design projects exhibited in the 2016 Global Grad Show:

Micro Wind Turbine: A miniature wind turbine that can charge mobile devices in harsh conditions with minimal light, designed Nils Ferber at ECAL in Switzerland.

TippyTalk: An app that allows a person with a verbal disability to communicate by translating pictures into text messages, designed by Robert Laffan at Limerick Institute of Technology in Ireland.

Synchrony: A touch-based music therapy platform designed for Autistic children, designed by Kenneth Tay at ArtCenter College of Design in the USA.

Favo: A motion-operated shower system designed for communities that lack running water by Núria Molina and Anastasia Melnikova at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil

Growframe:A system of collapsible hydroponic farms that can grow food in empty shipping containers returning to China, designed by Philippe Hohlfeld at Royal College of Art in the UK.

Exacto: A social networking application that identifies and maps accessible spaces for people with physical handicaps, designed by Patricia Landeta at National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico.

Hilla: A night light system helping the elderly and the visually impaired to move about their homes safely, designed by Tilda Jyräsalo, Lara Jasim, and Jaakko Raami at Aalto University, in Finland.

Shelters for Extended Families: A system of inhabitable roofscapes designed for the Jerash refugee camp in Jordan as a means of providing communal spaces without compromising currently existing private and service spaces by Dina Samara of American University of Sharjah in the UAE.

The 50 participating schools are:

Aalto University (Helsinki, Finland)

American University in Dubai (Dubai, UAE)

American University of Sharjah (Sharjah, UAE)

Anhui University of Technology (Ma’anshan, Anhui, China)

Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, USA)

Auckland University of Technology (Auckland, New Zealand)

Cambridge University (Cambridge, UK)

Centro (Mexico City, Mexico)

Design Academy Eindhoven (Eindhoven, Netherlands)

ECAL (Renens, Switzerland)

École de design Nantes Atlantique (Nantes, France)

École Supérieure d’Art et Design de Saint-Étienne (Saint-Étienne, France)

Eindhoven University of Technology (Eindhoven, Netherlands)

Emily Carr University of Art + Design (Vancouver, Canada)

FH Joanneum (Graz, Austria)

German University in Cairo (Cairo, Egypt)

Higher Institute of Industrial Design (Havana, Cuba)

Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Hung Hom, Hong Kong)

Ibero-American University (Mexico City, Mexico)

Istituto Europeo di Design (Milan, Italy)

KAIST (Daejeon, Republic of Korea)

Keio University (Tokyo, Japan)

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (Thuwal, Saudi Arabia)

Limerick Institute of Technology (Limerick, Republic of Ireland)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, USA)

Middle East Technical University (Ankara, Turkey)

National Autonomous University of Mexico (Mexico City, Mexico)

National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (Taipei, Taiwan)

National University of Singapore (Singapore, Singapore)

Northeastern University (Boston, USA)

NYU Abu Dhabi (Abu Dhabi, UAE)

Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (Lima, Peru)

Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

Pratt Institute (New York, USA)

Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, USA)

Royal College of Arts (London, UK)

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (Melbourne, Victoria)

Samsung Art and Design Institute (Seoul, Korea)

Santa Catarina State University (Florianópolis, Brazil)

Srishti Institute (Bangalore, India)

Tshwane University of Technology (Pretoria, South Africa)

Tsinghua University (Beijing, China)

Umeå Institute of Design (Umeå, Sweden)

University of the Arts Bremen (Bremen, Germany)

University of Design Schwäbisch Gmünd (Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany)

University of Guadalajara (Guadalajara, Mexico)

University of Illinois Chicago (Chicago, USA)

University of Wuppertal (Wuppertal, Germany)

UPC Barcelona Tech (Barcelona, Spain)

VCU Qatar (Ar-Rayyan, Qatar)

Are you visiting the Global Grad Show 2016? Tell us what you think of the projects above in the comments.

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Don’t miss: Win Invites to UAE’s Only Millenlial Hub: The District, Here’s What’s Going on at Dubai Design Week 2016