URI programs provide students opportunities to learn necessary and important skills to research and innovate to take a leadership role in the society. These programs are designed to help student develop vision and strategic planning skills to address current and forthcoming global challenges. As STEM initiative is now appropriately complemented with arts (called as STEAM) to effectively develop an engaging perspective in design and also understanding the socio-economic impact, the URI programs are interdisciplinary and available to students from all majors encouraging them to network and learn skills to understand diversity and teamwork through peer interactions. URI programs also allow students to understand current and future needs and challenges of high societal impact to find solutions to address them with new products, design or services in the global market.

Ideas to find a plausible solution are naturally generated by human beings. However, the skills to develop a vision to transform those ideas into innovation for implementation in the real-world is learned and nurtured though carefully designed academic and research programs.  URI programs provide students an environment to explore and research their ideas and to interact with real-world experts to understand roadmaps associated with research and design future technologies. Student can also learn how to understand market trends so that they can re-think their solutions and learn pathways towards developing a successful product, design or service. With innovative research, they can lead to new discoveries and enhancement of knowledge towards developing a productive foundation for future technologies.