ENGR2199 Special Topics in Engineering
Special Topics in Engineering classes (ENGR X199) typically cover a specific topic in Engineering and are intended to enhance and expand the selection of offerings from semester to semester.
Credits
Variable Credits ENGR
Notes
SP16: Designing Resources for Empowerment and Making (DREAM); 4 credits (Millner)
The DREAM course will engage students in designing multiple types of resources for making, those related to: space, tools, and activities. Students enrolled in the course will leave empowered to passionately pursue making in contexts that enable others to make in ways that they may not have otherwise been able to. The course will entail rethinking the ways in which spaces are designed to facilitate young people creating physical objects? extending toolkits that afford handson exploration of making in technical domains such as programming and electronics design? and developing activities that take advantage of what new tools and spaces for making have to offer. The ideal offering being experiences that compel precollege learners to feel empowered to extend their own (and their peers') engagement in science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM) endeavors.
This projectbased course is running for the second time in the Spring of 2016, following a successful first offering the Spring of 2015. The early weeks will expose students to principles and practices for transforming living rooms, community centers and cities into areas conducive to making, and situate the ways in which doing so can empower groups to redefine their relationship with information and individuals around them. The following weeks entail exploring existing tools for making interactive systems (e.g., microcontrollerpowered development boards with sensing and actuation modules geared toward integrating with clothing or outdoor environments). Students will have opportunities to extend the kits based on an openhardware design ethos, which could entail adding a ""bit"" to the library of littleBits (littlebits.cc). Students will then grapple with experience design to envision what should become possible at the intersection of new spaces and new tools. A field trip to a maker space will highlight innovative empowerment in practice. After prototyping experiences, students will contribute their curricular resources to appropriate online outlets (such as instructables.com). See https://sites.google.com/site/olindream2015/.
FA15: ENGR2199B: Regional Analysis for Development; 2 credits (Mur-Miranda)
This course is taken in conjunction with MTH2188: Designated Alternative in Mathematics: Regional Analysis for Development; 2 credits (Mur-Miranda) and may be used to satisfy the Probability and Statistics requirement.
Students perform qualitative and quantitative analyses at the regional level to gain insight into development challenges and propose new ways of thinking, with an emphasis on the role of technology. For example, a student might study maternal health in Sub-Saharan Africa. Students select topics and regions based on interest and levels of unmet need, as well as other considerations such as cultural, climatic, technological, economic, political, and ecological ones.
Students will gain experience with analysis and modeling tools and data sets relevant to development with an emphasis on probability and statistics, GIS, and dynamic systems modeling. Guest speakers will share their experiences practicing data driven development. Students will create formal briefings with recommendations supported by a synthesis of quantitative data, analysis, and visualization and informed by the published literature. Students may have an opportunity to publish their work.
This course provides valuable preparation for students planning to enroll in ENGR 3290/4290 Affordable Design and Entrepreneurship (ADE) or perform research or work in international development. Wellesley and Babson students are encouraged to enroll.
SP15: Applications of Microfluidics; 4 credits (Irimia, Storey)
Microfluidics systems can manipulate small volumes of fluids using small networks of channels, each of which are 10 to 100 microns in size. These devices offer the promise of integrating many laboratory processes onto a single chip, thereby increasing throughput and decreasing cost. Microfluidic technologies are proving to be a critical tool for research in drug development, genomics, proteomics, molecular diagnostics, and analytical chemistry. Further development of microfluidics is one key to future applications such as personalized medicine, integrated sensors for chemical and biological detection, inexpensive medical diagnostics, and massively parallel drug discovery. Just as microelectronics revolutionized computation by increasing capacity and decreasing the cost of performing calculations, microfluidics has the potential to do the same in biology and chemistry. In this course, we will cover some of the basic physics, chemistry, fluid mechanics, engineering and mathematics relevant to microfluidics. We will study existing microfluidics designs and functions. The course will be project based with students designing and building functional microfluidic devices relevant to global health projects.
SP15: 2199A: Data Science; 2 credits (Downey)
This course must be taken concurrently with MTH2188A (2 credits)
This course may be used to satisfy the Probability and Statistics requirement.
Data Science lies at the intersection of statistics, machine learning, database design, and data visualization. The goal of this class is to prepare students to work on data science projects that involve collecting data or finding data sources, exploratory data analysis and interactive visualization, statistical analysis and machine learning, predictive analytics, model selection, and validation. Class work includes a substantial project on a real world application of the students? choice; projects might involve work with a social change organization like those on DataKind, or participating in a competition like those on Kaggle.
FA14: 2199B: Regional Analysis for Development; 2 credits (Mur-Miranda)
Students perform qualitative and quantitative analyses at the regional level to gain insight into development challenges and propose new ways of thinking, with an emphasis on the role of technology. For example, a student might study maternal health in Sub-Saharan Africa. Students select topics and regions based on interest and levels of unmet need, as well as other considerations such as cultural, climatic, technological, economic, political, and ecological ones.
Students will gain experience with analysis and modeling tools and data sets relevant to development with an emphasis on probability and statistics, GIS, and dynamic systems modeling. Guest speakers will share their experiences practicing data driven development. Students will create formal briefings with recommendations supported by a synthesis of quantitative data, analysis, and visualization and informed by the published literature. Students may have an opportunity to publish their work.
This course provides valuable preparation for students planning to enroll in ENGR 3290/4290 Affordable Design and Entrepreneurship (ADE) or perform research or work in international development. Wellesley and Babson students are encouraged to enroll. This course is taken in conjunction with MTH2188: Designated Alternative in Mathematics: Regional Analysis for Development; 2 credits (Mur-Miranda).