One of the Mozilla Labs‘ goals this year is to bring the open-Web innovation process to a wider community. We’re working on a number of new programs, and one of them is a more formal way for engaging with higher education. More details soon as we continue the roll out, but we wanted to let you know about a few of our early efforts:

1. Following on the success of our mentorship program last year, Northwestern has joined ranks this year with Stanford and Berkeley MBA students working with us to help tackle questions of strategy relating to open innovation. Cross-pollination is critical in connecting classrooms and academic research to products and end users.

2. We’re participating in a pilot program at the University of Illinois at Champaign’s IllinoisVENTURES 10 program. This program lets teams of university students, from any place in the world, apply for having their startup incubated at UIUC. Included in the 10-week summer camp is food, offices, help with incorporation, and seed funding. Mozilla Labs will be participating by highlighting opportunities for teams to advance the open Web and by providing mentorship where apropos. If you are interested check out the web site. Deadline for applications is May 15th, 2008.

Overall, we’re super interested in looking for other schools interested in working with us in pragmatic research on technologies that profoundly affect the lives of our families, friends, and communities. If you or your school want to get involved, please let us know by leaving a comment or giving as an email at partners@mozilla.org.