Math, logic, analysis, scientific reasoning, rational thinking — these skills are non-negotiable for engineers. The field of engineering has been built on the importance of empirical evidence and data. Analytical thinking allows engineers to create a data-based view of a product or system and use a logical skill set to innovate, design, and improve it.

At Northwestern Engineering, analysis drives our innovations and gives our faculty and students the systematic way of thinking needed to become the engineering leaders of tomorrow.

Education

Undergraduate Research Opportunities

We believe that between what's known and what hasn't been tried yet, there's untapped possibility. That's why we provide a powerful hands-on research experience for students to develop an advanced understanding of today's complex engineering and scientific challenges. Undergraduate research begins as early as the first year, with students collaborating alongside world-class faculty and graduate students. At any given time, you’ll find about 47% of engineering undergraduates actively engaged in on-campus research. Our faculty members are on the forefront of groundbreaking innovation, and our students are often part of teams that publish notable results.

Innovative Course: Engineering Analysis

Our innovative Engineering First curriculum introduces first-year students to the fundamentals of a rigorous engineering education alongside practical applications and experiences that emphasize the power of communication. The curriculum brings together two aspects of whole-brain engineering: Engineering Analysis and Design Thinking and Communication.

In Engineering Analysis, students engage with engineering concepts from the beginning of their first year, including linear algebra, engineering mechanics, physics, differential equations, and MATLAB programming. Each course integrates these topics with engineering applications, and MATLAB is used throughout the sequence to provide students with important tools to augment their professional development.

Research

Collaborative and cross-disciplinary

At Northwestern, analytical thinking is readily apparent in research labs that continually produce the innovations of tomorrow. We are making strategic investments in research areas that will drive progress in the coming years. Our award-winning faculty, including several members of national academies, work across disciplines to create new knowledge while maintaining a solid grounding in the fundamentals.

Design is an essential skill for whole-brain engineers. Our view of design is broad: it extends seamlessly from research and product design to systems design and design of services, and it includes such areas as health care systems, financial products, and architecture.

Watch to Dean Ottino introduce design and whole-brain thinking to incoming students

Design thinking is a key pillar of right-brain thinking for engineers at Northwestern. Design thinking is the ability to see and solve the real problem behind the perceived problem. We teach our engineers to study the problem, frame the correct problem, ideate and prototype solutions, then meaningfully communicate the story and idea behind the solution.

We focus on human-centered design, taking a unified approach to problem solving that draws from the domains of engineering, social science, and psychology. Our collaborative research program brings together leading faculty and graduate students from across the University to advance design research. Our programs extend from project courses and certificates to degrees and graduate programs that focus on integrating design in all forms of human endeavor.

Design innovation empowers leaders to develop meaningful solutions, create new value, and envision new possibilities. At the highest level, design unlocks creativity and the ability to imagine a new future.  
Julio M. Ottino, Dean, McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science

Segal Design Institute

Segal Design Institute educates the next generation of design thinkers and leaders — people who are able to move across domains and industries, identify convergences, and create impact through the lens of human-centered design. It provides a variety of immersive, interdisciplinary programs for undergraduates, graduate students, and working professionals that teach collaboration and leadership in design thinking.

Education

Innovative Course: Design Thinking and Communication

Our innovative Engineering First™ curriculum introduces first-year students to the fundamentals of a rigorous engineering education alongside practical applications and experiences that emphasize the power of communication.

In Design Thinking and Communication (DTC), students work on solving problems brought to them by community clients while strengthening communication skills so others can better understand and use the results. This two-course sequence puts students to work immediately, training them to distinguish the real issue behind a perceived problem. And as they gain proficiency in communicating, DTC students master design thinking, developing the problem-solving and presentation skills necessary to thrive in a competitive marketplace. DTC is extended beyond Northwestern Engineering to students throughout the University through the Design Thinking and Doing course. Students from a wide range of disciplines learn the key methods of design innovation and work in teams to apply those methods, explore ideas, and prototype solutions.

Design Thinking at All Levels

At both the graduate and undergraduate level, students work on projects that produce tangible results and improve the lives of people around the world. Segal’s team-based approach to education encourages students to use design thinking to solve complex, authentic problems in product, interaction, service, and business design.

Research

Northwestern Engineering conducts research that advances our knowledge of design innovation and human-centered design by:

• bringing together researchers, faculty, and students with diverse interests and backgrounds
• providing resources from multiple schools at Northwestern University
• driving toward greater understanding of specific concepts and topics in design

At the center of design research is the PhD Design Cluster. This multi-school cluster brings together dynamic faculty from the Segal Research Faculty Council and PhD students from a variety of disciplines.

Student Groups

Design for America

Design for America, founded at Northwestern, is a national network of campus studios where students work in interdisciplinary teams with local community partners to design solutions for social good. Teams work throughout the school year on projects that last anywhere between eight weeks to a year. Studios are supported by professional experts who provide mentorship, faculty members who connect students to university resources, and the DFA network which offers instruction and best practices. Students prepare for a future in the field of innovation, build lifelong friendships, and help change their communities for the better.

In this time of rapid change, we are interested in how enduring concepts and values intersect with new ideas, leading us to constant progress and innovation at all levels.

Learn more about our entrepreneurship vision

You can find entrepreneurship and innovation activities in nearly every corner of Northwestern, ranging from centers and institutes to student groups and administrative offices. Northwestern Engineering strives to maximize the benefits of entrepreneurship by offering resources and mentorship to motivated researchers and students, and by guiding and informing early interactions with potential licensors.

The creation of companies is a byproduct of what we do at Northwestern Engineering, not the central objective. However, when there is a desire to start a company that allows our innovators to move their own ideas into practice, we encourage it. We follow best practices that lead to more successful startup companies — companies founded by inventors and skilled lab members instead of non-inventors who seek to commercialize the technology of others solely for financial gain.

Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation

The Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation facilitates the next generation of interdisciplinary learning at Northwestern by integrating many different disciplines and bringing together faculty from a number of schools to develop courses where students experience the entire innovation-business lifecycle — from ideation to prototyping and business plan development.

Education

Innovative Courses: NUvention

NUvention is our flagship suite of interdisciplinary courses. Within NUvention courses, students work together in teams to learn the entire innovation and entrepreneurial life cycle. Throughout the course, students design, plan, and launch businesses. It’s Northwestern’s most concerted effort to bring the world of startups to the classroom and brings together both undergraduate and graduate students in experiential entrepreneurship education.

• NUvention: Analytics: Designed to create opportunities for students to create new analytics technologies and then build businesses around their innovations.
• NUvention: Arts: Facilitates the creation, innovation, and organization of new ideas and companies in the field of the creative arts. The goal is to help students understand that success in the arts is a function of passion, work ethic, talent, and entrepreneurial drive.
• NUvention: Energy: Responds to the demand for innovation and entrepreneurship in the sustainable energy and clean tech space, which will increasingly be required to deal with climate change, resource constraints, and other environmental challenges.
• NUvention: Medical: Creates opportunities for students to create new medical technologies and then build businesses around their innovations.
• NUvention: Transportation: Designed to create opportunities for students to learn about and create businesses in the transportation space.
• NUvention: Web + Media: Designed to expose students to the entire product and business development life cycle for a software company.

Leadership is more than being the boss. It’s asking the right questions, working as part of the team, and creating a framework for success that inspires and mobilizes those around you.

At Northwestern Engineering, we provide students with the resources needed to prepare personally and professionally for the person they want to be, and we offer a unique assessment tool that helps students understand how their teamwork and leadership abilities can be improved.

Center for Leadership

The Center for Leadership offers opportunities for all students to improve their skills through an environment that nurtures experimentation and innovation. Northwestern is one of only a few academic institutions that boasts a University-wide research center dedicated to the study of leadership and dissemination of the latest and best practices.

Office of Personal Development

Our Office of Personal Development empowers students to take ownership of their learning and personal growth. The office helps students develop the skills to be lifelong adaptive learners by fostering five core competencies:

• Awareness: Leveraging intellectual curiosity and the confidence to question as you create your personal, professional, and civic identity
• Optimization: Identifying tensions among competing resources and desired outcomes, and applying resources to accomplish goals
• Fidelity: Loyalty to a consistent level of quality and integrity based on internal motivations, rather than external demands or rewards
• Resilience: Persevering in the face of challenging situations
• Self-Reliance: Confidently applying knowledge of yourself and your abilities in the service of your values and goals

Education

Innovative Tools: The Leadership Portal

The Center for Leadership's Portal offers students the opportunity to learn about their leadership and teamwork abilities through two innovative tools: the 360° Leadership Assessment and the Teamwork Assessment.

The 360° Assessment is an evaluation that collects insights from professors, classmates, and others to help determine a student’s leadership strengths and weaknesses. In a subsequent coaching session, participants meet with program leaders to discuss the findings and explore pathways for growth. Grounded in principles of “authentic leadership,” programs like these teach students to develop their individual leadership style based on their own talents, rather than emulate a maverick CEO who’s perceived as today’s great leader.

Built from best industry practices and our proprietary research, the Teamwork Assessment identifies typical teamwork problems at the individual and group levels and provides a process for solving them.

Innovative Course: Engineering Improv

Engineering Improv: The Art of Allowing introduces Northwestern Engineering teaches undergraduates to use improvisational techniques, including developing sensory awareness, attention and focus, collaboration, trust and support, storytelling skills, and commitment to character. The course helps undergraduate students develop accurate self-awareness by creating an environment that encourages them to explore available opportunities and engage in new experiences.

Innovative Course: Emotional Intelligence 101

Emotional Intelligence 101: Managing Yourself, Maximizing Your Potential gives Northwestern students the tools they need to master their attention. By doing so, they manage stress and improve focus, self-awareness, and empathy for others. Based on the Bar-On Model of Emotional Intelligence, the course is divided into five topics: stress management, self-perception, self-expression, interpersonal relationships, and decision-making.

Learn more about our global vision

Ultimately, we believe that curating a whole-brain network augments our thinking and unlocks new capabilities. This systems-thinking approach gives us a framework to connect with partners across disciplines. Northwestern is built for these connections; the majority of our science departments are clustered within a set of interconnected buildings, and Northwestern Engineering actively pursues formal collaborations with nearly every school at the University, on the Evanston and Chicago campuses, and at our San Francisco space.

Our view of collaboration extends beyond our borders, with the Office of Global Initiatives supporting faculty and students in making deep connections with collaborators across the world.

Art

At Northwestern Engineering, we collide the fields of art and engineering to explore their commonality and differences, with the hopes of educating students with new ways of thinking. We facilitate opportunities for students to experience Engineering + Art through innovative courses and events, as well as partnerships with institutions like the Art Institute of Chicago and the Northwestern's Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art.

Humanities

By its very nature, engineering is creative and directed to human uses, but oftentimes, creativity is an afterthought, or taught at the end of engineering studies. In the arts and humanities, creative and metaphorical thinking come into play early on in education. By bridging these two fields, we can educate students who appreciate different ways of thinking and grasp opportunities to contribute something distinctive. Our faculty are already bridging these gaps through research.

Law

At Northwestern, engineering and law work together to educate lawyers and engineers to advance innovation. Northwestern Engineering has a close partnership with the Pritzker School of Law, putting on joint events, offering collaborative classes, and encouraging interdisciplinary research.

Medicine

Northwestern Engineering has strong relationships with the highly ranked Feinberg School of Medicine, the innovative Northwestern Medicine, and the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, which is consistently named the top rehabilitation hospital in the country. Our researchers work to build autonomous wheelchairs, create implantable, stretchable medical devices, and build better models for distributing donated organs to save more lives.

While the outcomes of art and science are fundamentally different, there are significant benefits to bringing more visual, more artistic thinking into science and engineering. The value in this intersection resides in enriching how the other side thinks. Both sides have a romantic view of the other. Scientists and engineers equate art with creation, beauty, and inspiration; artists equate science and engineering with cold methodical logic and rationality, and maybe, a singular moment of inspiration when a great discovery is made.

Dean's perspective: What art and engineering can learn from each other

But it is precisely in the similarities and opposites where interesting things happen. How can there be a constructive intersection between these spheres and their practitioners? There are at least two ways. One is the need to make things. This is most clear at the extremes of engineering and science. The other is creativity. At a high level of abstraction and production, the differences between artists, scientists, and engineers blur. They all rely on a singular need, craving or obsessiveness, and an ability to enjoy the process of creation for its own sake.

At Northwestern Engineering, we support Engineering + Art initiatives to help students expand their ways of thinking.

Partnerships

Block Museum of Art

Northwestern Engineering collaborates with the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art to:

• Host speakers who discuss the intersection of art and engineering to the Northwestern community.
• Stimulate interactions between engineers and humanists, allowing for conversations about ethics and responsibilities through the Artist-at-Large program with Dario Robleto.

Art Institute of Chicago

The Northwestern University/Art Institute of Chicago Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts is a collaborative endeavor in conservation science that pursues objects-based and objects-inspired scientific research to advance the role of science within art history, curatorial scholarship, archaeology, and conservation.