Three students awarded Unite! Seed Fund for social robot mental health workshop

By Isabelle Woodhouse and Stéphane Boivin

Three motivated students — Kelly Grace Zavala Fernandez and Carolina Eliana del Carpio Peralta from (Grenoble INP - UGA) along with Gonzalo García López (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya) have successfully have won Unite! Seed Fund support to launch an innovative workshop: Design methodology for social robots to support student mental health.

A Unite! Funded Workshop Open to all

Set to take place in Grenoble, France from 8-10 September 2025 the workshop promises to be an exciting opportunity to learn more about social robotics and mental health. The programme is free of charge, with essential expenses including travel and accomodation being covered by Unite!

The workshop is open to students of Bachelor, Master and PhD level from Grenoble INP - UGA, Université Grenoble Alpes and UPC from all disciplines. All you need is curiosity and motivation! Apply before 4 August 2025.

Leveraging technology in mental health support

The project addresses a growing challenge in higher education: student mental health. Nearly 40% of students struggle with psychological difficulties, and one in five facing serious disorders like anxiety and depression.

By combining robotics, psychology, and user-centered design, the team aims to inspire students to see how technology can play a positive role in mental health support. Participants will get hands-on experience designing social robots, gaining skills that could help shape the future of tech-based mental health solutions.

Guided by a social robotics specialist and a project management professor, the workshop promises to be engaging and practical. Highlights include a clear design methodology, industry guest speakers, and interactive sessions exploring how technology can make a difference in mental health care.

« We developed a methodology combining Design Thinking and the Conceptual Design of Mechatronic Systems using the Function/Means Tree. This approach supports both the empathy and testing phases with users, as well as the functional decomposition during the robot’s conceptual design. »

Kelly Zavala, project co-leader (Grenoble INP - UGA).

Thanks to the Seed Fund, this initiative marks a promising step toward building more empathetic, tech-driven solutions for one of today’s most urgent student challenges.

Apply here