School

What does a "Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering" mean? What about a Master of Engineering in Product Design? Well here's a course list with some descriptions. If you're here because you're looking into pursuing a path like this, please feel free to send me an email and I'd be happy to chat about how awesome engineering is.

And while they're not listed here, remember that this is on top of a constant stream of school projects! There was never a quarter, semester, or summer that I wasn't working on some kind of research or class-related project. Or two.

Master of Engineering in Product Design

UC Berkeley, 2018

Classes:

1. Interactive Device Design
   Concepts and skills required to design, prototype, and fabricate interactive devices. We got to build several projects including the automatic window opener.

2. Human-centered Design
   Hands-on and real world experience in the development of innovative and realistic customer-driven engineered products, services or systems.

3. Electromechanical Design
   Fundamental principles of magnetics, electro-magnetics, and magnetic materials as applied to design and operation of electro-mechanical devices. Type of device to be used in a particular application and dimensions of parts for the overall design was discussed. Typical applications covered were linear and rotary actuators, stepper motors, AC motors, and DC brush and brushless motors. A design project is required.

4. Lean Manufacturing
   Fundamentals of lean manufacturing systems including manufacturing fundamentals, unit operations and manufacturing line considerations for work in process (WIP), manufacturing lead time (MLT), economics, quality monitoring; high mix/low volume (HMLV) systems fundamentals including just in time (JIT), kanban, buffers and line balancing; class project/case studies for design and analysis of competitive manufacturing systems.

5. Leadership

6. Entrepreneurship

7. Finance

8. Marketing

9. Organizational Behavior (Ethics)

10. R&D Tech Management

Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering

UC San Diego, 2017

Classes:

1. MAE 3 - Introduction to Engineering Graphics and Design
   Introduction to design process through a hands-on design project performed in teams. Topics include problem identification, concept generation, project management, risk reduction. Engineering graphics and communication skills are introduced in the areas of: Computer-Aided Design (CAD), hand sketching, and technical communication. 

2. MAE 8 - MATLAB
   Computer programming in Matlab with elementary numerical analysis of engineering problems. Arithmetic and logical operations, arrays, graphical presentation of computations, symbolic mathematics, solutions of equations, and introduction to data structures.

3. MAE 20 - Elements of Materials Science
   The structure of materials: metals, ceramics, glasses, semiconductors, superconductors, and polymers to produce desired, useful properties. Atomic structures. Defects in materials, phase diagrams, microstructural control. Mechanical and electrical properties are discussed. Time temperature transformation diagrams. Diffusion.

4. MAE 101A/B - Fluid Mechanics
   Fluid statics; fluid kinematics; integral and differential forms of the conservation laws for mass, momentum, and energy; Bernoulli equation; potential flows; dimensional analysis and similitude. Laminar and turbulent flow. Pipe flow including friction factor. Boundary layers, separation, drag, and lift. Compressible flow including shock waves.

5. MAE 108 - Probability and Statistical Methods
   Probability theory, conditional probability, Bayes theorem, random variables, densities, expected values, characteristic functions, central limit theorem. Engineering reliability, elements of estimation, random sampling, sampling distributions, hypothesis testing, confidence intervals. Curve fitting and data analysis.

6. MAE 110A - Thermodynamics
   Fundamentals of engineering thermodynamics: energy, work, heat, properties of pure substances, first and second laws for closed systems and control volumes, gas mixtures. Application to engineering systems, power and refrigeration cycles, combustion. 

7. MAE 130A - Statics
   Statics of particles and rigid bodies in two and three dimensions. Free body diagrams. Internal forces. Static analysis of trusses, frames, and machines. Shear force and bending moment diagrams in beams. Equilibrium problems with friction.

8. MAE 130B - Dynamics
   Kinematics and kinetics of particles in 2-D and 3-D motion. Newton’s equations of motion.  Energy and momentum methods. Impulsive motion and impact. Systems of particles. Kinematics and kinetics of rigid bodies in 2-D. Introduction to 3-D dynamics of rigid bodies. 

9. MAE 131A - Solid Mechanics
   Concepts of stress and strain. Hooke’s Law. Axial loading of bars. Torsion of circular shafts. Shearing and normal stresses in beam bending. Deflections in beams. Statically determinate and indeterminate problems. Combined loading. Principal stresses and design criteria. Buckling of columns. 

10. MAE 105 - Intro to Mathematical Physics
    Fourier series, Sturm Liouville theory, elementary partial differential equations, integral transforms with applications to problems in vibration, wave motion, and heat conduction.

11. MAE 107 - Numerical Methods and Analysis. Computational Methods
    Introduction to scientific computing and algorithms; iterative methods, systems of linear equations with applications; nonlinear algebraic equations; function interpolation and differentiation and optimal procedures; data fitting and least-squares; numerical solution of ordinary differential equations. 

12. MAE 140 - Linear Circuits
    Steady-state and dynamic behavior of linear, lumped-parameter electrical circuits. Kirchoff’s laws. RLC circuits. Node and mesh analysis. Operational amplifiers. Signal acquisition and conditioning.

13. NANO 156 - Nanomaterials
    Basic principles of synthesis techniques, processing, microstructural control and unique physical properties of materials in nanodimensions. Nanowires, quantum dots, thin films, electrical transport, optical behavior, mechanical behavior, and technical applications of nanomaterials.

14. MAE 143A - Signals and Systems
    Dynamic modeling and vector differential equations. Concepts of state, input, output. Linearization around equilibria. Laplace transform, solutions to ODEs. Transfer functions and convolution representation of dynamic systems. Discrete signals, difference equations, z-transform. Continuous and discrete Fourier transform. 

15. MAE 130C - Vibrations
    Free and forced vibrations of undamped and damped single degree of freedom systems. Harmonically excited vibrations. Vibrations under general loading conditions. Vibrating systems with multiple degrees of freedom. Modal analysis with application to realistic engineering problems. Vibration of continuous systems.

16. MAE 160 - Mechanical Behavior of Materials
    Elasticity and inelasticity, dislocations and plasticity of crystals, creep, and strengthening mechanisms. Mechanical behavior of ceramics, composites, and polymers. Fracture: mechanical and microstructural. Fatigue. Laboratory demonstrations of selected topics.

17. MAE 133 - Finite Element Analysis
    Development of stiffness and mass matrices based upon variational principles and application to static, dynamic, and design problems in structural and solid mechanics. Architecture of computer codes for linear and nonlinear finite element analysis. The use of general-purpose finite element codes.

18. MAE 143B - Linear Control
    Analysis and design of feedback systems in the frequency domain. Transfer functions. Time response specifications. PID controllers and Ziegler-Nichols tuning. Stability via Routh-Hurwitz test. Root locus method. Frequency response: Bode and Nyquist diagrams. Dynamic compensators, phase-lead and phase-lag. Actuator saturation and integrator wind-up.

19. MAE 170 - Experimental Techniques
    Principles and practice of measurement and control and the design and conduct of experiments. Technical report writing. Lectures relate to dimensional analysis, error analysis, signal-to-noise problems, filtering, data acquisition and data reduction, as well as background of experiments and statistical analysis. Experiments relate to the use of electronic devices and sensors.

20. MAE 101C - Heat Transfer
    Extension of fluid mechanics to viscous, heat-conducting flows. Application of the energy conservation equation to heat transfer in ducts and external boundary layers. Heat conduction and radiation transfer. Heat transfer coefficients in forced and free convection. Design applications.

21. MAE 144 - Embedded Control and Robotics
    Each student builds, models, programs, and controls an unstable robotic system built around a small Linux computer. Review/synthesis of: A) modern physical and electrical CAD. B) dynamics, signals and systems, linear circuits; PWMs, H-bridges, quadrature encoders. C) embedded Linux, C, graphical programming; multithreaded applications; bus communication to supporting ICs. D) classical control theory in both continuous-time (CT) and discrete-time (DT); interconnection of CT and DT elements.

22. MAE 150 - Computer-aided Design
    Computer-aided analysis and design. Design methodology, tolerance analysis, Monte Carlo analysis, kinematics and computer-aided design of linkages, numerical calculations of moments of inertia, design of cams and cam dynamics; finite element analysis, design using Pro-E, Mechanical Motion and Mechanical Structures.

23. MAE 171A - Laboratory
    Design and analysis of experiments in fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, and control engineering. Experiments in wind tunnel, water tunnel, vibration table and material testing machines, and refined electromechanical systems. Laboratory report writing; error analysis; engineering ethics.

24. MAE 156A/B - Capstone Design
    Fundamental principles of mechanical design and the design process. Application of engineering science to the design and analysis of mechanical components. Team design projects that culminate in a working prototype designed for a real engineering application. Professional ethics discussed.