“Stone Age,” “Iron Age,” “Silicon Valley” – these terms reflect major aspects of human civilization. From textiles to sugar, to transistors and smartphones – various products have proven critical developments in human history. What materials made them possible? What new industries did they spawn? What new problems did they create? What might come next?

A river runs through natural settings, a river runs through urban environments. Most rivers in the world have been impacted by human activities. Our goal is to gain a solid understanding of river dynamics and related ecosystem services. As engineers, we will learn methods and tools to restore habitats for certain aquatic species, stabilize banks, and rehabilitate important natural functions in urban streams.

This course provides a detailed overview of the engineering design process – the “heart” of engineering – in a broadly accessible manner that assumes no specialized knowledge and is largely applicable to most engineering disciplines. Students also learn various practical skills commonly employed in the design process such as basic CAD and CAE, TRIZ techniques, patent searching, and project management software.

Instructors from five different disciplines will support your exploration of the creative design process through a collaborative, semester-long project: a multimodal essay, that combines architecture, art & design, engineering, music and writing to make an argument, while preparing you to work on interdisciplinary design teams.

Microprocessors and computing systems have become pervasive and have enabled the intelligent functioning of cars, chatbots, computers, phones, watches, websites, and countless other systems. In this course, you will build the hardware and software of a complete computing system, including the microprocessor, operating system-level code, and application program.

In this section of Engineering 100, students learn about the basic scientific and engineering principles involved in food science and engineering. They hone their technical communication and teamwork skills while gaining an understanding of the roles engineers play in food development and manufacturing.

Plastics are everywhere. The chemical industry produces millions tons of plastic every year. We use plastics to make electronics, toys, water bottles, and other consumer products. But where does all this plastic end up? Some of it is in garbage piles, some of it is in landfills, but a lot of it is in our oceans. You will learn how plastics are made and how we can repurpose or recycle them.

This section of Engineering 100 introduces fundamental concepts of bioengineering, biotechnology, and chemical engineering, and provides students an understanding of how biological systems can be engineered to solve real-world problems such as the need for renewable energy and affordable medicine.

Autonomous systems such as self-driving cars, robots, and drones are being used today in a wide range of applications, from search and rescue to smart farming, from package delivery to the future of mobility. In this section, you will design and validate an engineering solution to enable a novel application based on an autonomous drone using the AirSim engine drone simulator.

In this section of ENGR 100, students will learn about solar energy collection and storage, and more generally, about electrical circuits, micro-controllers, wireless technology, and energy/power. The first half of the class will teach concepts in each of these areas, where electrical systems provide information collection, processing, and networking for all engineering fields.

In this section you will learn data processing methods by analyzing music signals the way an engineer would analyze other data from sensors. Motivated by music signals, you will learn the basics of Fourier signal analysis and synthesis – a tool used in many engineering fields, including Biomedical, Environmental, Electrical and Computer Engineering as well as Computer Science.

This section introduces students to the engineering profession by exploring the engineering challenges to using renewable energy as a “green” alternative to fossil fuels. Students learn concepts of renewable energy, culminating in a team-based term project to produce a device that scavenges wind energy to perform a task.

Biomedical engineers envision, design, re-design, and test devices on the bleeding edge of medical technology; devices that improve and even revolutionize the treatment, diagnosis, and monitoring of the most important health challenges facing humanity today. This section of ENGR 100 is built to give you the opportunity to learn about and experience this process hands-on with real medical devices.

When developing new technologies, engineers must carefully consider the impact their decisions may have on individual stakeholders and on society as a whole. In this course, you will learn a variety of prototyping methods within the context of a socially-engaged design process. You will then apply these skills to address a real-world problem in the field of public transportation.

Bioinspired design views the process of how we learn from nature as an innovation strategy translating principles of function, performance, and aesthetics from biology to human technology. The creative design process is driven by interdisciplinary exchange among engineering, biology, medicine, art, architecture and business.

Autonomous and remotely-controlled vehicles are important tools used for exploring terrestrial planets and planet-like moons. In this section, you will design, build, and test a rover system capable of collecting microscale ore particles from an emulated planet surface and transferring particle samples to the onboard microscope for material characterization.

In our section, you will work in a team of five to design, build, test, and communicate about a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), sometimes called a submersible, for underwater exploration. The ROV has a set of tasks that it will need to do, but otherwise this is a “free design” project with minimal constraints on size, shape, and function.

This course introduces students to practical Aerospace Engineering processes by the means of design, build, test and operation of simple flight vehicles (e.g. hovercraft). This Systems Engineering Experience includes an extensive design-build-test-compete component.

When developing new technologies, engineers must carefully consider the impact their decisions may have on individual stakeholders and on society as a whole. In this course, you will learn a variety of prototyping methods within the context of a socially-engaged design process. You will then apply these skills to address a real-world problem in the field of public transportation.

To successfully operate a pizza chain, or any fast/casual food chain for that matter, we must not only have high-quality and good-tasting products that the consumers crave but a solid and reliable supply chain extending all the way from the suppliers to hundreds of individual outlets where the food is stored, prepared, and served to the end customer.

Do you ever have to swipe your M card more than once to enter your dorm room? In essence, there is always room for improvement in everyday processes. Continuous improvement in processes and operations focuses on consistently applying methods that improve the quality of a product or service.

Robotics systems are beginning to serve a broad range of new and diverse roles in multiple aspects of modern society. But how are these robots designed and how are they developed?

Expect the unexpected! Radiation is invisible and everywhere: some is natural (radon gas) and some is artificial (nuclear power). Radiation can be useful (diagnosing and curing disease) and dangerous. You will learn how to approach technical problems that affect human safety by triangulating various data, designing unique approaches to radiation risks, and pivoting in the face of unexpected circumstances and results

As more people experience the real impacts of climate change, the need for strategic collaboration between design experts and local communities has become more urgent. In this section, you will use XR technologies to learn socially-engaged design and community outreach related to nuclear technologies for global decarbonization.

In this class, students will learn how to use a systems approach to build a sensor board using a micro-controller to take both in situ and remotely sensed observations of a high-altitude environment.

Rocket science, how we use rockets to move stuff around the Earth and throughout the solar system, is a confluence of several engineering fields including mechanical, aerospace, and electrical engineering as well as computer science. When a system is built, its performance is measured and compared against expectations given the design.