Welcome to ISAM 2025
The International Symposium on Academic Makerspaces (ISAM) will be held in on the beautiful UC Berkeley campus in Berkeley, California August 6-8, 2025!
Hosted by the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation and located at several venues across campus including the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation for opening workshops and events and Pauley Ballroom for the main conference.
New for 2025:
• New Demos track – submit and come show your demos to the ISAM community!
• Separate Posters submission track
• Opening and closing keynote speakers
• Expanded Awards categories led by new Awards Committee
Learn more about presenting at and attending ISAM 2025
Feel free to contact us at isam2025@berkeley.edu.
We look forward to seeing you in August!
What is ISAM
The International Symposium on Academic Makerspaces (ISAM) is the preeminent annual meeting for the academic makerspace community. Over a span of 3 days, 300+ faculty, staff, student, and industry leaders gather to share makerspace knowledge, experience and inspiration in order to maximize impact on (i) the student learning experience and (ii) alumni success.
Past attendees have included student and faculty advocates, upper administration/leadership, government policy makers, educational researchers makerspace managers, industrial representatives, and other practitioners.
This year the organizing host for ISAM2025 is the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley.
Why ISAM?
Higher education makerspaces impact the efficacy of student learning in fields that include science, engineering, mathematics, music, entrepreneurship, medical/biomedical, architecture, mathematics, literature, and more. These spaces have demonstrated an ability to foster highly beneficial interdisciplinary interactions and supportive peer communities that extend beyond the boundaries of a makerspace. This nascent field is fast growing, and now is the time to gather people and knowledge together so that resources are best used to rapidly and broadly infuse makerspaces into higher education. ISAM was created in 2016 to make this happen. ISAM will gather, and make available, knowledge and best practices that may be used to form student maker communities, get students excited about using these spaces, perpetuate a culture of safe, fun and responsible use, measure/maximize educational and social impact, and to select appropriate practices, programming, safety policies, training, staffing and equipment. ISAM believes in providing a balance of different approaches to creating, running and maintaining makerspaces that yield measurable impact. This is facilitated via:
- Short courses that cover principles and practices.
- Invited experts that provide insight into emerging areas, concepts & research.
- Technical papers & poster presentations that disseminate the most recent advances.
- Community discussions around core topics and new developments.
- Community building and networking/making events.
- Industry booths to exhibit and learn about the latest technologies
ISAM is a collaborative effort of the Higher Education Makerspace Initiative. Learn more at hemi-makers.org.
Past ISAM Events and Archived Proceedings
- November 13 – 16, 2016 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA;
Proceedings - September 24 – 27, 2017 Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH;
Proceedings - August 3 – 5, 2018 Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA;
Proceedings - October 16-18, 2019 Yale University, New Haven, CT;
Proceedings - November 12, 2021 Virtual; Proceedings
- November 6-9, 2022 Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA; Proceedings
- October 18-20, 2023 Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA; Proceedings
- September 11-14, 2024, University of Sheffield & UNIMAKER; Sheffield, UK; Proceedings