Affiliations …
Systems Design Engineering

The Department of Systems Design Engineering has evolved over the years into a unique interdisciplinary department in Engineering. Its undergraduate curriculum represents a rational response to increasingly complex situations in modern technological society, involving not only technical, but also environmental, socio-economic and political factors. It is a well balanced program, designed to enable each individual student to find optimum solutions to multifaceted complex problems. A set of special interdisciplinary Systems Design workshop courses, stressing systems design methodology, forms an essential part of the program.

The challenges that face today's scientific and engineering community require the ability to cross disciplines easily in order to use technology and research results to empower both individuals and entire societies.

Systems design engineering is a relatively new branch of engineering, and integrates selected material from other programs within the Faculty of Engineering that have relevance and applicability in most systems contexts. Systems students learn the fundamentals of electronic (digital and analog) systems, classical and modern control theory, and become highly qualified software engineers with the ability to interface these diverse components to each other to meet a functional or performance requirement. Students can specialize further according to their preferences in the latter half of the program. In upper years, you can specialize in the kind of systems you are interested in, such as human systems, intelligent systems (including robotics), mechatronics, societal and environmental systems, and systems modelling and analysis.

Systems design engineering is multidisciplinary and works at many levels of abstraction. From analysing the signal processing characteristics of a single nerve cell; to macroscopic human-machine systems involving psychological factors; to broad high-level studies in society, technology, and values. The systems design engineer is a most adaptable individual, and among the most capable people in society.

Finally, systems design engineering prepares the student for leadership in a complex technological society that requires interdisciplinary thinking capability to meet future needs for complex, balanced decision-making.