The Development Impact Lab (DIL), headquartered at UC Berkeley, is a USAID-funded academic network leveraging breakthroughs in science, engineering, and economics to improve global development outcomes. DIL is establishing a new discipline of “development engineering” that integrates the design of pro-poor technologies with insights and tools from development economics and other quantitative social sciences. The Lab is partnering with USAID to design and implement activities that focus student innovation on carefully identified social and economic development needs. Examples include: 1) student “capstone” projects addressing development challenges identified by government experts, 2) graduate courses on design for sustainable communities, with practica guided by outside experts, 3) student contests, with private sector mentoring to help students translate ideas into action, and 4) research demonstration projects that engage doctoral students in applied innovation and rigorous impact evaluation, which ensures that new ideas actually generate positive impacts for the poor.