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.
ISAM 2025 will feature:
• Opening Keynote by Adam Savage, New York Times bestselling author, multiple Emmy-nominated producer/host (Mythbusters), highly decorated YouTube creator (Tested.com), and internationally acclaimed science communicator, and cosplayer.
Closing Keynote by Leah Buechley
Leah Buechley is a creative force who electrifies the worlds of art, engineering, and making—sometimes quite literally. Best known as the inventor of the LilyPad Arduino, she stitched new life into electronics by making circuits wearable, sewable, and fabulously sparkly. With a soldering iron in one hand and a needle in the other, Leah transforms tech into something tactile, personal, and wildly imaginative. As the founder of the High-Low Tech group at the MIT Media Lab, she mashed up high-tech tools with low-tech crafts—think paper circuits, interactive clothing, and glowing origami. Her work has graced museums like the V&A and the Exploratorium and inspired a global movement of makers, hackers, crafters, and curious kids. Now a professor at the University of New Mexico, Leah leads the Hand and Machine Research Group where she continues to break boundaries—designing new materials, championing equity in STEM, and reminding us all that technology isn’t just for coders and robots—it’s for artists, dreamers, and storytellers, too. Whether she’s programming conductive ink or teaching the next generation of tech-tinkerers, Leah Buechley is reimagining what it means to create, connect, and make magic with machines.
Special Reception Performance by Andrew Evans
Andrew Evans is a designer, entrepreneur and magician. He founded and built The Magic Patio—a magic speakeasy tucked in a hidden corner of San Francisco—and his unique magic inventions have been featured at The Magic Castle in Hollywood and on national television for Penn and Teller’s: Fool Us. Beyond the stage, Andrew worked as a Design Lead at IDEO and Nike, and was a lecturer in Design Leadership at Stanford University’s d.school. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering from Brown University, and Master’s Degree in Product Design from Stanford.
The ISAM 2025 Program will also include:
• New Demonstrations track
• Expanded Awards categories
• Curated panels including special guests
• Exhibiting sponsors / vendors
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