Exair had an opportunity to help bring engineering dreams to life through the UCCR Team. The company has a long history of community engagement, particularly with the University of Cincinnati. By contributing time, product, and financial backing, the company supports and encourages the growth of a younger generation of engineers and continues increasing the visibility of STEAM learning.

In an article published last year, Brian Farno, CCASS application engineer at Exair, recounted his experience discussing robot design with the students.

“Hearing them talk about these devices they have labored over and listening to their confidence climb when they start rambling off the velocities the tip of the weapon travels remind me of when I was in a similar position. These students all shared a passion and had similar goals in mind; to be the best team that is in the field. This isn’t just another checkbox for them to complete a grade or a test, it is a vested interest,” said Farno.

Giving back to the community, fostering creativity, and furthering the engineering profession aligns with Exair’s values. With traveling to events, finding materials for the robots, providing funding for fabrication costs, and other expenses, the company supports these students academically while encouraging them to become the best version of themselves. It also offers a litany of resources to further educate on compressed air, fluid dynamics, and manufacturing as a whole. Tools like case studies, webinars, white papers, and a daily blog provide insight and guidance for aspiring minds.

To learn more about the company, visit exair.com.

For further information about the University of Cincinnati Combat Robotics and the Center for Robotics Research, visit ceas.uc.edu/research/centers-labs/center-for-robotics-research.html.

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It’s not surprising or new – the need for highly skilled engineers is reaching an all-time high, driven by the requirement to continuously improve everything from medical devices to automotive design, artificial intelligence, robotics, data analysis and more. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, engineering employment is expected to grow 7% over the decade from 2021-2031, while SAE International forecasts that one in three engineering roles is expected to remain unfilled through 2030, due to the workforce’s lack of relevant technological skills.

And as the technologies in the engineering industry continue to advance, this gap will only grow wider if left unaddressed.

“The shift toward more automation and simulation, digitization, the use of data – all these technology-driven changes are speeding up,” says Sean Gallagher, director at Huron Consulting Group. “This places demands on professionals to stay current by keeping up with these shifts and the changing demands of the job market.”

Add in demographic changes from workers aging out of the occupation and retiring, and the result is an innovative industry that needs skilled engineers at a rate outpacing the amount of talent graduating from colleges and universities. 

From undergraduate degrees to licensure and continuing education, becoming an engineer takes time. 

“The pipeline to become an engineer — and depending on the type of engineering, to become licensed — is a long one,” Gallagher says. “So, there are only so many people who are qualified to fill these jobs. And there’s a lot of demand for these jobs.”

If this skills gap isn’t addressed, Gallagher says, this could lead to waning progress.

“We won’t have enough engineers to build the things we need, the pace of innovation will slow down, you’ll see shortages and other undesirable events in the job market,” he says. “A skilled engineering population is at the core of so many different industries and areas of the economy and society. Historically, that’s why national governments and employers, colleges and universities, all these stakeholders around the world, worked to develop the engineering workforce and invest in that important pipeline of talent.”

Closing the gap with microcredentials

One emerging path forward to help close the engineering skills gap is microcredentials.

The term ‘microcredential’ is something of a catch-all, Gallagher explains. It describes a credential that is more compressed than a macro-credential (e.g., a traditional college degree).

“What we’re talking about is a skill-focused, targeted, short educational program,” he says. 

These microcredentials can be issued by colleges and universities, but also by companies, non-profits, and training organizations. Because of the focused and targeted nature of microcredential programs, they can be a useful way for engineers to refine and verify their understanding of specific skills — whether that’s AI programming, change or process management, or a specific software or tool — without the time investment and expense of degree programs. And because microcredentials are designed around industry needs, they can bridge the gap between engineering theory and practice, and provide upskilling and reskilling opportunities for engineers looking to expand their capabilities.

Moreover, in the wake of pandemic-era shifts to online education and a desire for flexible learning opportunities, many microcredential programs are fully digital and can be completed online. This means they are accessible, affordable, and easily shareable on a resume or LinkedIn profile through verifiable achievements in the form of digital badges and certificates that link to information about the credential and completion confirmation.

These digital microcredentials also slot in well with the shift toward more inclusive hiring strategies that encompass a focus on prioritizing skills and talent assessments, rather than strictly hiring based on degree achievement. 

“Most major engineering employers have all kinds of excellent internal training,” Gallagher says. “But if those don’t result in a credential of some sort, how can a worker use that, in terms of portability and recognition in the job market?” 

Microcredentials fill this niche, giving workers a way to present and demonstrate their abilities, and giving hiring managers an easily verifiable way to assess candidates’ skills during the hiring process. 

In short, microcredentials are key to closing the engineering skills gap, by providing greater visibility into the skills engineers possess, making it easier to digitally share and verify proof of these skills, and ensuring engineers are up to date with the most current training and information for their field.

For a deep dive into how microcredentials bridge the skills gap in engineering, read the Huron-produced and Siemens-sponsored white paper Addressing the engineering skills gap with credentials.

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The VARLab specializes in harnessing advanced simulation and modeling methods to tackle business challenges. Magnetic 3D’s 100-in. glasses-free 3D displays empower researchers to visualize and refine complex layouts, such as manufacturing facilities, in a fully immersive environment. By integrating real-world data, they can test configurations and simulate business processes to optimize efficiency. This smart manufacturing approach enables companies to streamline operations, reduce costs, and refine design, development, and engineering workflows before committing to physical construction. Additionally, linking the digital twin to real-world sensors provides real-time insights for ongoing improvements.

One of the core advantages of digital twins is their ability to provide dynamic 3D simulations of real-world processes. Magnetic 3D’s technology enhances this experience by adding depth perception, allowing stakeholders to step inside the simulation for a more intuitive understanding. This capability is particularly valuable in early-stage concept development, where engineers can use immersive 3D visualization to present their ideas and secure stakeholder buy-in more effectively.

Dr. Carolina Cruz-Neira, a trailblazer in virtual reality and co-inventor of the CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment), serves as co-director of the VARLab and holds the Agere Chair Professorship at UCF. Her expertise in immersive technologies will help drive innovative applications of holographic 3D displays in digital twin research, further bridging the gap between virtual simulations and real-world implementation.

“We are excited about our partnership with Magnetic 3D because their glasses-free 3D displays have incredible benefits and a lot of utility for many applications in our field,” she said in a press release. “Our research group primarily focuses on modeling and simulation in 3D environments, so we appreciate Magnetic 3D’s platform, which allows us to visualize and collaborate in 3D as a group without having to wear 3D glasses or headsets.”

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“We began this effort based on feedback from educators. Industry 4.0 is here and companies are struggling because they’re not workforce ready. Much of the knowledge being taught in the classroom is not geared to digital strategies,” says Pooja Thakkar Singh, program manager for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The courses are meant for mechanical engineers, manufacturing engineers and Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machinists. The sixth course contains examples of R&D work that show how to apply acquired knowledge to projects using Autodesk’s Fusion software. The overall goal of the curriculum is to empower educators and equip students and professionals with in-demand skills that will advance their careers and support modern manufacturing.

“The courses run between 30 and 45 minutes, with the underlay of the Fusion exercises being a little bit deeper. The software is very easy to use. This is advanced manufacturing,” says Debra Pothier, senior manager for Autodesk for strategy for architecture, engineering, construction and operations (AECO) and a partnership owner for ASME.

For example, the design for sustainability course covers how value chains and supply chains impact the environment and product lifecycles influence design solutions. It also explores the importance of the “Triple Bottom Line,” a framework that measures social, environmental and financial benefit.

“There were requests to make the courses as customizable as possible due to the changing landscape of Industry 4.0. We accomplished this by integrating PowerPoint slide decks and videos that faculty and instructors can switch out to keep up with the latest information,” says Singh.

Another way to customize the courses is to use Doodly, an animation software. The program can create dynamic virtual board drawings for videos. 

“Then you can remake the courses by re-recording and re-downloading content as many times as you need,” says Singh.

Critical ingredients for the courses

One of the key components of the courses is explanations of digital manufacturing skills that apply to mechanical engineering, manufacturing engineering and CNC machining, like CAM 2.5, 3-axis milling and simulation.

“Doing this impactfully involved getting all the stakeholders together in one virtual classroom. We had to ask ourselves what students were looking for and what they were passionate about. We also had to cover the challenges that industry experts were facing. We didn’t know those until we heard that from the sources,” says Singh.

Another key component is a simultaneous focus on hard skills, such as data analysis, and soft skills, like collaboration.

“We demonstrate how Fusion software facilitates the communication of generative design AI outputs, bridging the gap between technical skill and practical application,” says Curt Chan, strategic partnerships manager for Autodesk.

A third key component is explanations of the enormous impact of AI and how this tool affects the design process. In some situations, generative AI software can handle 90 percent of the programming required for machine part development. A mechanical engineer can then utilize their expertise to finetune the last 10 percent.

AI is like “a whole new toolbelt in a number of ways,” says Jason Love, technology communications manager for Autodesk.

Before AI was widely used, a mechanical engineer designing an assembly might be required to learn how to draw a diagram of the parts in an assembly.

“Now there are tools in place that with the click of a mouse, create those 2D diagrams from your 3D models. It falls to the human engineer to double check the accuracy of those drawings,” says Love.

Some educators may be unfamiliar with such changes or the new workflow itself. The courses address these problems by ensuring viewers grasp how many options AI creates.

“Faculty are going to have to teach the entire process, not their little silo,” says Pothier.

How and why the curriculum works

The six courses are not critically tied to one another. This gives an educator flexibility to “plug and play.” A manager could assign a course when an employee has downtime or an educator wants to offer extra credit.

“Through conversations with educators, I’ve observed many different ways they are planning and implementing the curriculum,” says Chan.

The models have a loose sequential order. For example, the course that serves as an introduction defines the term “Industry 4.0.” It also explains the driving forces behind production processes and relates the remaining challenges from Industry 3.0. A later course on digital literacy and data skills provides participants with an understanding of Industry 4.0 technologies and data measurements. This course also gives participants an understanding of the role of big data and how numerical insights drive manufacturing processes.

Each course has a self-assessment that learners can complete to earn a certificate. Participants can earn credit or mark their skills as upgraded after completing certain courses or the entire set.

One factor contributing to the popularity of the courses is the shift during the past five years to the use of online education, for both synchronous and asynchronous learning. This is partly due to the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Students and engineers have also become more well versed and more highly motivated to utilize knowledge they have drawn from online content. 

ASME and Autodesk’s history of partnership

The Industry 4.0 curriculum is the latest result of ASME’s and Autodesk’s history of teamwork. The two entities have been working together since 2021. That year, Autodesk Foundation, Autodesk’s philanthropic arm, began donating funds to ASME’s Engineering for Change (E4C) research fellowship program.

As of late February 2025, the Autodesk Foundation has funded over 100 E4C fellowships to support nonprofits and startups in a range of fields. These include energy and materials development, health and resilience systems and work and prosperity opportunities. The donations to E4C have also expanded the reach and impact of Autodesk Foundation’s Impact internship program. That program connects individuals in the Autodesk Foundation portfolio with new engineers.

In 2022, ASME and Autodesk released the results of a collaborative multiphase research project on the future of manufacturing. The effort involved a research study conducted between August 2021 through May 2022. The report on the study investigated and identified the future workflows and skills required for mechanical engineering, manufacturing engineering and CNC machinist roles.

“This was the project that was the basis for the six-course curriculum. The second phase of the project was the curriculum design and creation. We piloted the first four courses by launching a competition relating to sustainability and ocean clean-up,” says Singh.

The Autodesk-hosted event featured university teams designing an autonomous robot to clean up trash from the ocean. Students relied on skills they had learned from the courses.

One of the teams in the competition, Wissen Marinos, was formed of students from India’s National Institute of Technology Silchar. Wissen Marinos team captain Pratisruti Buragohain says participating in the competition enabled team members to develop problem-solving abilities, technical skills and soft skills.

“Despite facing various hurdles along the way, we tackled each one of them strategically and with a meticulous determination. In essence, our experience throughout the competition bestowed upon invaluable lessons, equipping us with enhanced design proficiency, research skills and efficient problem-solving strategies,” says Buragohain.

Additional steps for the curriculum have included the translation and localization of the courses into Japanese and German. ASME and Autodesk are tracking how widely the curriculum is used and asking what information students and engineers are learning from it.

“Any curriculum takes time. It’s going to take time to drive it the use of this curriculum. That’s about keeping a pulse on the industry, hearing what they have to say and what Autodesk’s customers have to say,” says Chan.

Pothier says Autodesk is striving to close the skills gap and be a trusted partner to engineering firms.

“We give the underpinning of, “This is how you do it with Fusion and we’re giving you modular pieces.” We’re giving it to universities and firms in a way that students really want to consume it. Our team is very passionate because we feel if you’re going to be sending your kids to school, they need those skills today,” says Pothier.

View the courses at: https://www.autodesk.com/learn/ondemand/collection/asme-manufacturing-education-courses.

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In this report, you’ll learn about:

• Emerging technologies and global challenges: Explore five technologies poised to revolutionize industries worldwide and the challenges engineers must address.
• Skills and training for the future: Learn essential technical skills for the future of engineering and vital soft skills that can elevate your career.
• Educator and employer priorities: Gain insight into the top priorities of engineering educators and employers, including interdisciplinary collaboration and personalized learning.
• A roadmap for aspiring and practicing engineers: Find strategies to develop in-demand skills needed by future engineering employers, whether you’re a student or an experienced professional.

This report is only the beginning, and the future engineer will be defined by more than technical skills alone. Adaptability, ethical decision-making and a dedication to lifelong learning will be equally important. By taking these steps, you can advance your career and play a pivotal role in shaping a brighter, more sustainable future for all.

Your download is sponsored by Autodesk.

The post The Engineer of the Future appeared first on Engineering.com.

Funded with nearly $2.5 million from the National Science Foundation, eCAMINOS began in fall 2024 at the Tucson and Yuma campuses. The program’s name (‘camino’ means ‘path’ in Spanish) represents engineering pathways, and its intention is to shift education away from addressing students’ knowledge deficiencies and toward valuing strengths and experience. Studies indicate that this sort of mentoring approach helps create a more equitable playing field for students in engineering, including those from marginalized groups.

“One of the most important things we do as Arizona’s flagship land-grant university is to mentor students in ways that inspire them and help them realize their own potential,” said University of Arizona President Suresh Garimella. “As an engineer and an educator, I’m pleased to see pathways open for more students to pursue their goals. The eCAMINOS program will not only create opportunities to help them succeed in higher education, but also will prepare them for impactful future careers.”

Asset-based rather than deficit-based thinking has been shown to be effective in promoting student success, said project lead Vignesh Subbian, associate professor of biomedical engineering and systems and industrial engineering and member of the university’s BIO5 Institute.

“But little is known about how to do it longitudinally, throughout the student’s engineering program. This project helps us do that,” Subbian said.

The NSF grant funds scholarships and research into a model that systematically combines strengths-based mentoring with development of portfolios that showcase their skills, projects and achievements. Faculty will investigate longer-term outcomes, such as educational persistence and employment. The researchers aim to inspire significant change in educational approach to nurture a more inclusive learning environment in engineering, said Ann Shivers-McNair, a researcher involved in the study.

“We also hope that transformation will happen within the cohorts of students, as they share and reflect – and, we hope, start to see the impacts of what they are sharing in their local program contexts in Tucson, Yuma and beyond,” said Shivers-McNair, associate professor of English and information science.

Financing meaningful scholarships

Sixty percent of the award is providing scholarships to undergraduates over a period of five to six years. Up to 50 students will receive a maximum of $15,000 each annually throughout their university education. Program leaders expect to serve 28 students from Yuma and 22 from the main campus in Tucson. Undergraduates in any engineering major who meet financial need and academic criteria are eligible to apply.

Many of the students are the first in their families to attend college, and they often expend considerable effort navigating a multitiered financial aid network, said Sam Peffers, director of Yuma’s engineering programs and a professor of practice in systems and industrial engineering.

“This grant gives students a single source that fills unmet needs,” he said. “That’s time and effort they can put back into their studies.”

Fortifying student identity

All U of A engineering undergraduates gain practical experience in the college’s four-year design program, and many complete internships and join clubs that foster identity and leadership skills, such as the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers.

The eCAMINOS program goes further. With guidance from faculty and academic advisers, students in the program create asset-based portfolios that showcase not only classroom work but also relevant life experiences, such as helping make community improvements and taking on leadership roles.

“Students put the portfolios together over time to reflect on their engineering identities and help lead them to the profession,” Subbian said. “When students are ready for their careers, they have these portfolios that say, ‘This is what I did in engineering; this is who I am.'”

Faculty involved in eCAMINOS are partnering with several Arizona employers to establish engineering internships geared to students in the third year of the program. NSF and Intel Corp. also are collaborating to provide additional semiconductor-specific educational and career resources to awardees in this group of STEM education grants.

As the two student cohorts progress through their studies, program researchers will study and compare the needs and assets of the two groups, striving to illuminate how different environments and perspectives affect outcomes.

Participation in eCAMINOS is expected to help students overcome common psychological barriers, said Peffers, who predicts the program will encourage more undergraduates to begin and complete engineering degrees in the next few years and ultimately fill gaps in the workforce.

“Sometimes, students are challenged to visualize themselves in engineering,” he said. “There’s a struggle with becoming a knowledge worker when they haven’t seen others take that path. This model helps them realize what they’re bringing to a sphere that initially feels alien.”

A model for engineering educators

The remainder of the NSF award will support the research component and assessment of the program’s efficacy in increasing student retention and placement in high-demand Arizona careers.

Program leaders intend to disseminate their findings regionally through the statewide consortium of Hispanic-Serving Institutions and nationally through engineering education societies.

Marla Franco, vice president for Hispanic Serving Institution Initiatives at the U of A, said helping transfer students – especially those pursuing STEM degrees – succeed is vital to the university’s federal HSI designation.

“Supporting students from Yuma is also of great priority as an HSI, as we seek to increase access and opportunity in ways that affirm students’ identities and acknowledge the vibrant communities where they reside,” she said.

At the university’s Yuma campus, students begin Bachelor of Science programs in engineering after transferring with two-year degrees from Arizona Western College, which shares the campus with the U of A, or Imperial Valley College in California. The University of Arizona Yuma offers programs in fields important to the community’s economy – agriculture, health care, energy and the military – including degrees in industrial, systems, mechanical and software engineering.

Advancing the land-grant mission

David W. Hahn, the Craig M. Berge Dean of the College of Engineering, said eCAMINOS encourages more students to acquire critical knowledge to meet society’s most pressing problems, a responsibility inherent in the university’s land-grant mission.

“Engineering education is fundamental to the health and prosperity of Arizona’s people,” said Hahn. “This program greatly increases opportunity and stands to enrich our state with more engineers to improve agriculture, environmental and climate conditions, and contribute to critical industries like domestic semiconductor manufacturing.”

This award was provided by the NSF under Grant No. 2322673.

For more information, visit arizona.edu.

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Li has worked for ECE for the past five years. Before his professorship, he earned his bachelor’s degree at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He then moved to the U.S., where he obtained his PhD at the University of Texas at Austin in 2018, and then he spent one more year working as a postdoc at UT-Austin.

Li’s teaching interests focus on analog and mixed-signal circuits, something that he says developed around the second or third year of his bachelor’s degree, when he studied abroad at UCLA.

“I was drawn to the beauty of analog circuits for the first time while in an analog circuits class,” he said. “There’s a lot of things to learn, but eventually I became relatively adept at it. I also wanted to do research on analog circuits, because there are a lot of unsolved problems with them, in my opinion.”

Engineering.com: What inspired the collaboration between Georgia Tech and Texas Instruments?

Li: Analog circuit design is a very traditional course that started more than 100 years ago. The problem with the conventional program was the lack of hands-on practice for the students. When you built analog circuits on boards in the old days, you were able to play around with the soldering components on a PCB and take measurements with an oscilloscope, spectrum analyzer, etc.

But as you know, technology is advancing. These days, almost all of the university classes involve building integrated circuits. When it comes to integrated circuits, however, hands-on education is a lot harder because you have to find a way to fabricate the silicon and then measure it correctly. The silicon is the biggest problem because you have to work with a foundry. There are concerns with that, the first of which is cost. It is very expensive to fabricate an integrated circuit. The other concern is typically associated with the legal side, which involves going through a complicated legal negotiation in order to set up the fabrication process.

I would say that for the past 30 or 40 years, most analog IC education results in simulations. It’s more like a toy; a model of transistors, using simulators like SPICE or Spectra. They get a sense of how to design things on the computer and simulate it, but they don’t really get the chance on touching the real things and measuring them.

Yet here’s a gap. When you have students learn by way of simulation, they think the end result is good. But they are missing a lot of the real-world effects, the non-idealities, that occur when they are on the physical silicon. When they graduate and go to work, it takes a longer time for them to adapt to the real-world design environment. We really want to bridge this gap and make like an analog IC education more realistic for the students and allow them to gain practical design experience.

Engineering.com: What is the significance of analog circuits in established technologies, as well as any emerging technologies?

Li: Analog circuits are everywhere and yet, these days, we talk about how powerful digital computers are. The thing is there are almost always some sort of analog parts inside a digital chip. For example, they may regulate the power supply of the digital chip. They may manage how much current should be delivered. We also have a lot of sensors that could be measuring the temperature of the CPU, whether a certain part is going to be too hot, or whether to redistribute the workload to another place.

There are also really high precision analog applications that are used to sense the real-world information, such as human body vitals or a very small signal coming from space. Whenever you want to send something from the environment, you have to use analog circuits.

You also have analog circuits used in communications, such as in your cell phone, where you want to receive, or you want to send out information. To do this, you have to go through the power amplifiers and then through the receiver chain. And those are analog circuits. In between the analog world and the digital world, you also have to translate analog information into ones and zeroes.

Looking into the future, have we already built enough analog circuits to sustain future applications? The answer is no! A lot of the emerging applications still require analog circuits and more and more powerful ones, too, such as those required for artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence systems will eventually need to interact with the environment. To do that, you will need an interface between the AI accelerator or computing device and the environment. That interface requires analog circuitry.

With quantum computing you will need to rely on analog to control the core of the quantum computer — the qubit. That is done by first modulating the signal into an analog frequency waveform. They are not controlled by digital actually, they need to modulate the signal first into an analog kind of radio frequency waveform. So, analog circuits are everywhere, and their importance will continue to grow. It’s a very essential circuit in our lives.

Engineering.com: What challenges do students face when they’re learning the chip tapeout process in classes?

Li: Tapeout is essentially the process of bringing your idea into a design, and then turning the design into a fabricatable mask. Then, you send the mask to the foundry, which guides the foundry on how you want to grow the silicon on the wafer. This is an absolutely essential process for the success of the design. There are actually a lot of challenges throughout the whole tapeout process for students, especially for someone who has a very limited experience in circuit design.

The first challenge they may have to meet is taking the specification that the customer provided to them and translating those specs to a circuit — choosing the right architecture and circuit topology.

After that, they have to draw the circuit on their own — not drawing the symbol or schematic, but actually drawing the layout of how the chip should be arranged on the piece of silicon. The layout process is new to almost all the students that are taking my class. It takes them a while to figure out what each layer means and how to picture the 3D structure of the layers in their mind. There is a learning curve.

The third challenge is how to minimize the post layout degradation of the circuit performance. When you start to do the layout and then simulate a circuit, there are suddenly a lot of non-ideality associated with the placement of the different layers and this can start to affect the circuit performance. These non-idealities include like plastic capacitance, IR drop, or a systematic or random mismatch. Then they have to figure out a good way to kind to overcome this and adjust their layout.

Then the fourth and final challenge involves the preparing to send the chip for tapeout. They have to put everything they designed together and pass what we call the design rule check and the layout-versus-schematic rule check. This process helps to ensure that the design is in compliance with the manufacturing requirement and that there’s no major mismatch between what you intend to design and what you actually drew.

Engineering.com: What kinds of student feedback have you gotten regarding this experience?

Li: They say, it’s very intensive, but it’s very rewarding because they learn a lot during this class. The students who have to go through this paper process on their own gain a lot more insights compared to students who only like play with the simulations. This experience can give them better understanding of how an analog circuit works in the real world. As we analog designer always say, insight or intuitions are the most important components in this subject. So, I think this experience better prepares them a designer job when they join the industry.

Engineering.com: How unique is this program of type of program? How does this position Georgia Tech in this area?

Li: In my opinion, Georgia Tech’s program is very unique. It’s probably the first program in the U.S. in terms of providing a tapeout opportunity to undergraduate students. It may not be the first one to provide a tape out opportunity for graduate students. From what I know, Universities such as UCLA and Columbia already have a tapeout program for their graduate students. But it’s only for a very small batch of students. They don’t really have the same scale as what we do here at Georgia Tech for undergrad students, not to mention for a large number of students.

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 Twelve-year-old Lonnie Johnson was fascinated by JFK’s now-legendary speech. The budding inventor would have no part in humanity’s giant leap on the lunar surface (“I’ll be real old by the end of the decade,” he lamented at the time). Still, the president’s words would inspire him throughout his engineering career—and it’s an inspirational career in its own right.

Johnson, now in his mid-seventies, has reached a level of success that most engineers can only dream of. He helped choose nuclear targets for the U.S. Air Force, designed critical spacecraft systems at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and holds more than 100 patents. Generations of children have cooled off in the summer with Johnson’s most famous creation, the Super Soaker, a pump-powered water gun that he invented by accident.

Lonnie Johnson. (Image: Ericsunphotography.)

Yet Johnson is still inspired by those famous words he heard as a young boy in Mobile, Alabama, and he still chooses the hard problems. Johnson has spent decades developing two inventions at the helm of his own R&D company that could prove pivotal in solving humanity’s energy woes. Johnson took a long road to get where he is today, and every engineer can learn from his journey. His incredible career reveals what it takes to be a model engineer—and how the right mindset can make all the difference.

Engineering trait 1: Curiosity

The 1940 biopic Young Tom Edison depicts the inventor as a curious boy whose ambitious scientific experiments don’t always go as planned. Young Lonnie Johnson, a fan of the movie and the man, could relate.

There was the time he tried to mix his own rocket fuel in the family kitchen and nearly burned the house down. His mother got him a hot plate and told him to take his experiment outside. Another time, he scavenged the junkyard for parts to build a working engine, stuck it on a go-kart, and gleefully drove it until the police pulled him over. It wasn’t his last traffic stop. A police officer intercepted him again one day to ask why he had sheet metal on the back of his bicycle, so he brought the officer home to prove that it was, in fact, for the robot he was building. Johnson often enlisted siblings or other kids in the neighborhood to help him realize his far-fetched projects, and they gave him a nickname: the Professor.

Looking over his career, Johnson says there are three inventions he’s most proud of (though hesitantly; “It’s like asking what’s your favorite child,” he says). He created the first of these three at the ripe age of 18, and it took most of his senior year of high school to complete: a robot named Linex. Linex was a meter tall, moved on wheels, had two arms with joints that swiveled, a chest that stored a propane tank full of compressed air, a mechanical computer coding system, his brother’s reel-to-reel tape recorder for memory, and a remote control made from his sister’s walkie talkie. Linex and its inventor won first place at the 1968 science fair held at the University of Alabama by the Junior Engineering Technical Society. A picture of the pair still hangs behind Johnson in his office today.

Linex the robot earned an 18-year-old Johnson first prize at a prominent science fair. (Image: Lonnie Johnson.)

Despite his proven brilliance on its campus, the University of Alabama expressed no interest in Lonnie Johnson. Instead, Johnson got an Air Force scholarship to attend Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama, a historically Black university where one of Johnson’s inventor idols, George Washington Carver, had taught and, upon his death in 1943, was buried.

In 1973, Johnson graduated with a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering and earned a master’s degree in nuclear engineering in 1975. That same year, he was called to active duty in the U.S. Air Force, where he studied nuclear-powered space launches for what would be known today as the Air Force Research Laboratory. (The AFRL was formed in 1997 to consolidate the Air Force’s disparate research departments). The work suited Johnson, and he was good at it—so good that he was invited to design the nuclear power system for NASA’s Galileo space probe, which set course for Jupiter on October 18, 1989.

It may not have been the moon landing, but Johnson had made his mark in cosmic exploration. In doing so, he perfectly demonstrated why engineers must always think for themselves.

Engineering trait 2: Independent thinking

Today, Lonnie Johnson runs his research lab, Johnson Research and Development, and oversees two spinoffs, Johnson Energy Storage and JTEC Energy. When asked what qualities he looks for when hiring engineers, Johnson has one answer.

“People who are difficult to manage,” he said, smiling but serious. “Independent thinkers.”

Even as a young engineer, Johnson never let naysaying colleagues deter him from pursuing solutions he believed in—one of which became the second of his favorite inventions.

The problem in question predated his arrival at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he worked on the Galileo space probe mission. It was a big one: if the Galileo short-circuited and its memory lost power, the spacecraft would lose the ability to communicate with Earth. Johnson designed a novel isolation circuit to preserve the memory in case of a power loss, and he knew it was a great idea—even if he was the only one who did.

“When I came up with the idea, a lot of my fellow engineers pooh-poohed it and said it wouldn’t work,” Johnson recalls. Only after Johnson threatened to go home and build one in his garage did the team reluctantly give the idea a shot. Johnson, they soon realized, was right. His memory keep-alive system worked.

“I literally had people coming up and apologizing to me after the fact,” Johnson says. “And these were some of the hand-picked engineers in the country, as you can imagine, working on advanced space systems like that. And at that point, I felt that I had arrived. I really had become an engineer.”

Of course, even the most independent-minded engineer can only think as freely as his employer permits. Johnson learned that lesson during his second tour of duty with the Air Force, in which he was placed at Strategic Air Command headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, serving the four-star general responsible for all three legs of the nuclear triad. Johnson recalls it as an “intense environment.”

“I can remember times when I would stick my head out of my door and look both ways before stepping into the hall because people would just be walking so fast,” he said.

Unsurprisingly, the military command center was not a place for independent thinkers. Johnson was doing critical work for his country, but the out-of-the-box thinker felt boxed in. Now that he commands his own engineers at Johnson R&D, he seeks out those who can challenge him with their opinions.

“I don’t have all the answers, and I value that pushback,” Johnson says. “Engineering is engineering. Reality is what works.”

Any engineer—or engineering manager—would do well to adopt the same mindset. But there’s more to being a great engineer than thinking for yourself. It’s the thought that counts, and Johnson, whose hero JFK’s words were etched into his brain, always thought big.

Engineering trait 3: Ambition

“Look for tough problems,” Johnson advises engineers young and old. “Those are the ones that make a difference.”

Johnson has easily found such problems. These days, he’s devoted to solving one of humanity’s most challenging problems: an energy and environmental crisis. More on that later. But Johnson’s ambition goes beyond engineering, and for the man who’d been so inspired as a boy by Young Tom Edison, perhaps the toughest problem of all was how to follow in Edison’s footsteps.

“I tell people I wanted to be an engineer before I knew what an engineer was,” Johnson said. “And I guess the same is true about being an independent inventor.”

Today, sitting in the head office of a research lab with his name on the door, Johnson is living his dream. But back in the early days of his career, the idea of being an independent inventor was just that: a dream. And it was treated with the same skepticism of his other wild ideas.

“I remember when I was in the Air Force talking to one of the scientists there, and I told him my goal was to be an independent inventor,” Johnson said. “And he looked at me and he shook his head and he says, those guys are like celebrities. You’ll never be an independent inventor.”

As with his memory keep-alive system for the Galileo space probe, Johnson didn’t need the validation of his peers to pursue what he knew was a good idea. Reality is what works, after all—and Johnson would first stumble towards the reality of being an independent inventor during his Galileo days.

Like many great inventions, the Super Soaker began as an accident. In Pasadena, Calif. in 1982, Johnson spent his days designing power systems bound for Jupiter. But he dedicated his nights to his own projects. This one was a refrigeration system that could use water as a working fluid rather than CFCs, which had recently been revealed as the cause of Earth’s depleting ozone layer. During one of his experiments, Johnson attached a nozzle he’d designed to his bathroom sink. Splash! A jet of water shot across the room. Johnson instantly saw the potential for a powerful toy water gun.

It might not have been the type of planet-saving invention Johnson would dedicate himself to in later years. Still, he knew a good idea when he had one. Johnson began working on a prototype pistol shortly after starting his second tour of Air Force duty in Omaha, making parts in his basement with a small lathe and milling machine. He gave the first-ever Super Soaker to his seven-year-old daughter, Aneka. As he watched her play with other kids on the airbase, it became clear that his water pistol was a success. “They couldn’t even get close to her with their little squirt guns,” Johnson wrote in a 2016 BBC article about his most famous invention.

Lonnie Johnson holds up his original Super Soaker prototype alongside a commercial version in a 2014 TEDx Talk. (Image: TEDx Talks.)

That early trickle of success became a waterfall. Today, generations of kids worldwide have felt the thrill and splash of Johnson’s iconic invention. The Super Soaker has generated more than $1 billion in sales, and in 2015 it was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame. The water gun ranks with Linex the robot and Galileo’s memory among Johnson’s favorite inventions.

But in 1982, Johnson’s journey with his homemade prototype was just beginning. He would learn that having a good idea is only the first step to success.

Engineering trait 4: Perseverance

An engineer who chooses to work on tough problems must be prepared to work. And work.

“Persevere,” Johnson says. “You can’t just coast along. You’ve got to persevere because some of the solutions will avail themselves over time.”

Johnson says unexpected obstacles are a given for any challenging problem. Expect roadblocks. To maneuver around them, engineers must understand the situation thoroughly. For the most demanding problems, there’s no roadmap.

Like when JFK committed to landing an American on the moon, such a project was uncharted territory. The engineering behind it wasn’t just hard; it had never been done before. The materials didn’t exist. The methods had yet to be developed. It was unknown after unknown. Many talented engineers persevered to realize that moonshot, not because it was easy but hard.

Johnson persevered for nearly a decade to bring the Super Soaker to market. He spent years refining his prototype and searching for a manufacturing partner, which he eventually found in the Larami Corporation. The toy first hit shops in 1990 as the Power Drencher, but it didn’t catch fire till the following year. After a name change and a big marketing push, 20 million Super Soakers were sold in 1991 alone.

“I remember just staring at my royalties cheque in disbelief,” Johnson wrote in his BBC article.

He wasted no time putting them to use. He used the money to start his own company, Johnson Research and Development, and finally realized his dream of being an independent inventor. At first, Johnson continued to focus on the Super Soaker, which spawned many models, and he also redesigned Nerf dart guns for Hasbro, which bought Larami in 1995. “I decided I wanted to be the king of all toy guns,” Johnson said. Another tough challenge, but one he was equal to: Johnson estimates that at one point, his inventions accounted for 80% of all the toy guns sold in the world.

Lonnie Johnson poses with one of the many models of his most famous invention, the Super Soaker. (Image: Lonnie Johnson.)

The problems Johnson works on today are more formidable. One of them is a new type of engine to convert heat to electricity using electrochemical processes rather than mechanical parts. It’s called the Johnson Thermo-Electrochemical Converter, or JTEC, and he’s been working to make it a reality for over two decades. When he started, it was just an idea on a whiteboard. The physics made sense, in theory. The problem was that the materials to make it didn’t exist yet.

There are two types of engineering problems, Johnson says. Research engineering is the hard kind, where you have to solve a problem that no one has yet solved. (“Turning a vision into reality,” as Johnson puts it.) That was what NASA had to do to put a man on the moon and what Johnson faced when he had his vision for the JTEC. The second kind of engineering is what Johnson likes to call brute-force engineering, where you take existing systems and components and figure out how to put them together in novel ways.

JTEC may have started as a research engineering project, but after persevering for 20 years and founding a dedicated spinoff, JTEC Energy, in 2020, Johnson and his team have invented their way past the major roadblocks. All that’s left now is the brute-force engineering to turn it into a viable product. Johnson says JTEC Energy is due to deliver a 250-kilowatt unit by late 2026.

It’s a similar story for Johnson’s solid-state battery, which is being developed by another spinoff, Johnson Energy Storage. Solid-state batteries are safer and more energy-dense than the ubiquitous lithium-ion batteries used in everything from consumer electronics to electric vehicles. However, making them a reality has been a tough nut to crack. Many companies and researchers have pursued the tricky technology over the years, but perhaps none with as much dedication as Johnson.

“I started working on solid-state batteries back about 25 years ago, with the idea that the auto industry would realize that solid-state batteries were indeed the next thing beyond lithium-ion,” Johnson says. “And so I decided to develop this technology, and this again was a situation where the materials that I needed to make this work didn’t exist.”

After so many years of evaluating “just about every material you could think of,” Johnson and his team finally hit upon a glass electrolyte for solid-state batteries that they believe will become the industry standard. Johnson Energy Storage is already making early sales, and Johnson is confident his long years of labor will pay off: “It will be a game changer.”

It took Johnson more than two decades to develop a solid-state battery. Still, he believes his perseverance will pay off. (Image: Johnson Energy Storage.)

Why stick with a project for so long? Johnson isn’t short on other ideas. He’s also working on desalination technology to combat freshwater scarcity and hints at plans for an ambient power generator for remote sensors, both of which are examples of brute-force engineering. Johnson has stuck it out for decades on big problems like JTEC and solid-state batteries because he believes in them—not for the profit that may pour in but because of their potential to benefit the planet and its people.

“The transition to renewable energy sources, in my mind, represents one of the greatest challenges facing the human race, and I’m working on two technologies that I believe will help to contribute toward a solution,” Johnson said in a 2014 TEDx Talk on his energy inventions.

Engineering trait 5: Leadership

“He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world.”

– Epitaph on the tombstone of George Washington Carver, buried in 1943 at Tuskegee University

As a budding inventor, Johnson was inspired by some of the greats: Thomas Edison, Leonardo da Vinci, George Washington Carver. When asked who he thought was a contemporary role model for the coming generation of engineers, he brought up Elon Musk—though he was quick to describe his “disconnect” with Musk’s values and priorities, a polite way of alluding to the Tesla CEO’s rocky public persona.

A better answer, and one that he’s too modest to give, is Johnson himself. Like Musk, he’s pursuing challenging energy projects to help humanity avoid climate catastrophe. Unlike Musk, whose endeavors are increasingly overshadowed by ego, Johnson always puts engineering first. When he gives speeches or grants interviews, it’s not for clout and fame. Instead, he sees it as an important step in passing the torch.

“I was content for a long time just doing my thing,” he says. Despite a discomfort with public appearances, he’s now made many, and for a good reason. “We need our youth to be motivated. We need to inspire people to pursue their dreams. And so, in that sense, I’ve become a role model, and I take that sense of responsibility.”

He’s done more than talk. In 2005, Johnson helped launch a robotics program for underserved youth in Atlanta, housing it in his company’s downtown facility. The program was a hit year after year. In 2017, it became an official non-profit called the Johnson STEM Activity Center that teaches thousands of young inventors about robotics, coding, virtual reality and more.

A group of students at the Johnson STEM Activity Center in Atlanta, Georgia. (Image: Johnson STEM Activity Center.)

Johnson has also learned to be an effective leader at his own companies.

Although he prizes independence of thought, he understands that solving the most demanding problems means working together.

“I’ve got projects that are bigger than I’ll ever succeed in doing by myself. So, I think one of my strengths at this point is the ability to delegate. My idea of success as an inventor is to see an idea take on a life of its own and become all it can be,” Johnson says.

What it means to be an engineer has changed over the decades of Johnson’s impressive career, and it’s still changing. Johnson is wowed by the implications of artificial intelligence, for one thing, suspecting that its impact on humanity could be phenomenal. Even without AI, Johnson says engineering has reached a “higher level of sophistication” thanks to the development of engineering tools for design and simulation.

However, some aspects of engineering have remained the same. Whether using a pencil and slide rule or an AI-enabled supercomputer, the best engineers share a few common traits. They must be curious about the world around them and how it works. They must be independent thinkers, trusting their knowledge and letting reality grade their work. They must have the ambition to tackle hard problems and the perseverance to solve them. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, they must accept responsibility for their inventions and their outsized role in leading the future.

In short, to be a better engineer, try to be more like Lonnie Johnson. And remember to have a little fun along the way.

(Image: BBC.)

The post The 5 traits of a great engineer appeared first on Engineering.com.

But technology doesn’t change by itself. It’s the people behind those changes that ultimately determine the success or failure of a digital transformation. The people must transform too, and for engineers, this transformation is already apparent.

Engineers in the digital age are facing new challenges and opportunities that are redefining what it means to be an engineer. The profession is evolving in ways that aren’t always easy to predict, but there are steps engineers and employers can take to keep pace with the transformation.

(Image: Bigstock.)

Engineering on hard mode

Engineers today are being asked to do more with less. Changing consumer expectations have created pressure to deliver products faster, with more features and for less money. As soon as one product hits the market, customers already anticipate the next iteration. These shorter development cycles also require more interdisciplinary collaboration, with electronics and software playing a major role in many more products. Engineers must also collaborate more closely with other departments in the company to ensure that products are built on time and in line with customer expectations. Add on an environment of intense global competition, and it seems that engineering has reached a new difficulty level.

“I think that it’s much harder for engineering today as a business function,” Asi Klein, a managing director at Deloitte, told engineering.com.

Even so, that doesn’t mean that the average engineer is struggling to keep up. The job may be getting harder, but the tools to do it are getting better, according to Dale Tutt, vice president of industry strategy at Siemens. Tutt believes that modern engineering software has simplified certain aspects of the job, providing a counterbalance to the increased pressure on engineering departments. He points to innovations like automated meshing and generative design, and the emerging potential of AI to automate mundane or repetitive tasks.

“On the one hand, there’s a lot of complexity out there and it’s changed the skill set that’s required for engineers,” Tutt says. “On the other hand, I think that digitalization and digital tools have really made some aspects of the engineering life a little bit easier, and maybe freed up their time to focus on those difficult problems.”

Generative design takes an initial CAD geometry, along with constraints, load conditions and other specifications, and returns one or more optimized designs. (Image: Siemens.)

Staying up-to-date with the latest digital tools is important for engineers, who should seek to maintain mastery of their design software as it evolves to incorporate new features and workflow shifts. Unfortunately, some engineering companies are still lagging behind in adoption of these tools, according to Klein.

“Plenty of our clients are still operating basically offline… So having the right enterprise tools is a good place to start as a foundation,” he says.

Engineers can build on that foundation by looking to emerging technologies that could impact their workflows. There’s no shortage of new tools and technologies to explore, from novel ways of computing like augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) to new methods of collecting and analyzing data like the Internet of Things and the exciting new frontier of artificial intelligence with the myriad opportunities it presents.

But for engineers to stay ahead of the pack, comfort with new technology is only half of the equation. The role of engineers is evolving beyond technical sophistication.

The need for talent mobility

As engineering requirements become more complex and engineers adapt to new technologies, one attribute will be key for engineers: versatility. Engineers have always benefited from soft skills like communication, teamwork and emotional intelligence, but these and other non-technical skills will become even more important in the digital age.

Klein considers these as leadership skills. “It’s customer management skills,” he says. “It’s facilitate skills, it’s storytelling skills, it’s business acumen. It’s the types of things that typically you’re not going to think about as an engineer because it’s such a technical role.”

As customer expectations continue to increase, it will no longer enough for an engineer to merely gather requirements and design a product. Engineers with leadership skills will provide better customer service, collaborate more effectively with other engineers and departments, and ultimately be better prepared for any changes that are in store for the profession.

So how can engineers sharpen their soft skills? One unorthodox method is to practice the ancient art of debate. But these skills can also be taught on the job, and for employers looking to retain talent, they should be. One of the most effective ways to keep engineers is to show them that can grow in their role, according to Matthew Fox, a senior manager at Deloitte. Most companies don’t have a talent retention problem, but a talent mobility problem, he says.

“Show people that there is the ability not just to progress but to move laterally as well, to take on different responsibilities within the organization, to constantly be challenged,” Fox told engineering.com.

This is an important point in an industry that’s facing a shortage of talent. To hold on to skilled engineers, employers may have to provide more flexibility than in the past—not just in terms of career progression options but also in terms of work hours and location. Klein says that flexibility is particularly important to the incoming Gen Z workforce. As the next generation comes up, it will be crucial to attract them to the engineering profession.

“There’s a pipeline that’s missing of engineers, especially of critical skill sets around electronics and software design,” Tutt says. “So there’s a lot more emphasis among companies today that are investing with universities to help generate interest in engineering programs.”

Example: How manufacturing engineers will evolve

By considering all these factors in the context of a specific engineering role, it’s possible to predict how that role may evolve. What is its core function, and how can it perform that function more effectively? How can an engineering role expand to provide more value? How might it have to adapt to technological changes? These are some of the questions Klein and Fox ask when seeking to understand the future workforce.

The analysts shared the example of a manufacturing engineer. By synthesizing industry and technology trends with the core responsibilities of manufacturing engineers, Klein and Fox predicted the skills these engineers are likely to need in the future. See the image below (click twice to enlarge):

A prediction of the skills that will be required by manufacturing engineers in the near future. (Image: Asi Klein and Matthew Fox, Deloitte, “Future of work for the digital enterprise.”)

Notice how the non-technical skills will continue to grow in importance, while several specialized and technology skills will soon be outdated, replaced by emerging alternatives. While the above image is specific to manufacturing engineers, any engineer or employer can go through the same exercise to predict what skills will be required in the future.

“That gives an organization the power to start putting together a meaningful talent strategy that aligns to the investments they’re making related to technology and processes,” Fox says.

Engineering is a constant

Engineering will continue to change in ways we can guess, and other ways we can’t yet predict. These changes can be daunting, but they don’t have to be. Tutt recalls his early days as an engineer in what he calls the “2D era” of drafting boards, pencil and paper. The shift to CAD and 3D design was a big change, and it required new ways of thinking and new methods of design. But after the initial switching of gears, Tutt realized that in one way, it wasn’t much of a change at all.

“It was a shift in methodology using the exact same information that those engineers already had,” Tutt said. “That knowledge that they had was still valid, but was now being applied in a different way.”

Whatever changes are in store for future engineers, Tutt believes that fact will remain. Engineers will simply have new ways of applying their expert knowledge. It could be in the metaverse, it could be with an AI copilot, it could be anything—but it will always be engineering. And it will certainly be interesting.

“I think it’s a more exciting time to be an engineer now than it was 20 years ago when I was an engineer,” Fox says.

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(Image: University of Cincinnati.)

Advancing your career as an engineer can be difficult. With all the changes happening across industries, technologies and even in the ways we work, taking that next step along your career path can seem uncertain or even perilous. How do you know the right move to make to ensure your continued success?

An undergraduate engineering degree is among the most valuable there is, but in a highly competitive market, it may not be enough to take you where you want to go. That’s why many engineers find themselves going back to school for master’s degrees, gaining the knowledge and credentials to become leaders in their respective fields. However, there’s more than one way to enhance your professional standing and it’s important to make sure you choose the right degree for your ambitions.

Master of Engineering versus Master of Science in Engineering

When it comes to deciding which master’s degree to pursue—a Master of Engineering (MEng) or a Master of Science in Engineering (MSE)—the key question to ask is where you want your degree to take you. Are you more interested in pure research and maybe even attaining a doctoral degree, or would you rather take on more of a leadership role?

Engineers sometimes worry that taking on additional degrees will actually make it more difficult to advance their careers, either because a post-graduate degree will price them out of the market in the eyes of many companies or because the number of organizations looking for engineers with their level of narrow domain expertise is so much smaller than those looking for engineers with a more generalized background. Of course, if you’re considering a career in academia, an MSE is definitely the way to go. However, if you see yourself working more in management (you might even be doing that already), an MEng may be a better fit.

What’s the actual difference between the degrees themselves? Eugene Rutz, associate dean for graduate studies in the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Cincinnati, explains it this way:

“When we started the Master of Engineering program about 20 years ago, we looked at our Master of Science program, which had a thesis-based option and a coursework-based option. We took that second option and reformulated it to focus on the practice of engineering rather than research.”

Eugene Rutz, associate dean of graduate studies in the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Cincinnati. (Image: University of Cincinnati.)

For most master’s degrees in engineering, the technical coursework is the same: whether you take an MSE in mechanical engineering or an MEng in mechanical engineering, you’ll be learning the same technical skills. The difference typically lies in what the MEng students do in place of a thesis. “Instead of taking credit hours for a thesis, our students take extra courses that are related to professional skills,” says Rutz. “If you’re going to work in a corporate setting and you know something about project management, about teamwork and communication, then you’re going to be a better contributor.”

Master of Engineering Programs

Since the coursework is usually the same, MEng degrees tend to fall under the same subdisciplines as MSE degrees. For example, the University of Cincinnati offers three online MEng programs:

• Electrical Engineering
• Mechanical Engineering
• Robotics & Intelligent Autonomous Systems

While these subdisciplines tend to be very broad, encompassing everything from aircraft to air conditioners, Rutz notes that what makes the University of Cincinnati’s programs unique is their future-facing focus. “Both the electrical and mechanical degrees are focused around Industry 4.0—the idea that big data, ubiquitous sensors, analytics and artificial intelligence are informing design and manufacturing. If we can equip working engineers with skills in those areas, they’ll be able to help their organizations be prepared for that shift.”

The same future-facing approach applies to the Robotics & Intelligent Autonomous Systems program, as the latter includes drones, mobile robots and collaborative robots (a.k.a. cobots). “Automation makes us more competitive,” says Rutz, “but it doesn’t eliminate the need for people who know how to use autonomous systems to improve processes in all kinds of industry.”

According to Rutz, this emphasis on preparing working engineers to thrive in ever-changing industries is what makes the University of Cincinnati’s MEng programs the only ones of their kind in North America. “I looked around and I did not find any other degrees in the United States that were focused that way. There are some in Europe and Southeast Asia, but not many. Of course, there are plenty of schools with good programs that offer five flavors of mechanical engineering online, but that’s not us.” Instead, the University of Cincinnati’s online programs focus on preparing working professionals for where their industries are heading.

That means teaching students about the challenges as well as the opportunities. As any experienced engineer knows, there’s a considerable gulf between the marketing language around Industry 4.0 and the pragmatic realities of implementing automation or data analytics into a real production environment. Artificial intelligence is an especially germane example of this, given the current hype surrounding large language models, such as ChatGPT.

“Being a good engineer means being able to adapt to using new tools,” says Rutz. “The demand for engineers who understand how to use machine learning is something we’re seeing more and more, so we want to be able to equip our students to handle those kinds of tasks.”

Succeeding in a Master of Engineering Program

Anything worth doing is worth doing well, and the keys to doing well in a MEng program are ensuring a good fit between your knowledge and experience and what the program has to offer, as well as taking advantage of the available support and resources for students. In the case of the University of Cincinnati’s online programs, that includes virtual office hours as well as tutoring, counseling and practically any other service available to students on campus.

“We have someone who works specifically with our Master of Engineering students on job opportunities,” says Rutz. “Although most of our students in the online space are already working and not necessarily looking to change careers, with the program being industry-focused, we want to ensure our students are prepared for that.”

(Image: University of Cincinnati.)

As far as finding the right fit goes, all three of the University of Cincinnati’s online MEng programs offer the flexibility working professionals need to continue their education. Students can enroll in the Spring, Summer or Fall semesters, and the programs can be completed in as few as 18 months. “If you’re interested in the program and capable of doing the coursework, we’d be happy to admit you,” says Rutz. “These programs aren’t meant to be competitive for the applicants—the goal is just to provide opportunities for those who are interested.”

Master of Engineering or Master of Science in Engineering: Which is Right for You?

The simplest way to decide whether to pursue a MSE or MEng is to ask yourself whether you’re more interested in theory or practice. If your ideal day involves research on the cutting edge, working in a lab or lecturing students, it’s a safe bet that you’d be happier with a Master of Science in Engineering. On the other hand, if you’d rather be working with other people on building things and making a practical difference in your industry as a leader, go with the MEng.

One final question you may be asking: Which one pays better?

According to Rutz, the two degrees are relatively similar in terms of both salary and career advancement. “What we can say is that, with the MSE, if an industry needs your expertise, they’ll come looking for you. But industries also need good, productive engineers that work well with others, and that’s what the MEng gives you.”

To learn more about the University of Cincinnati’s online Master of Engineering, visit the program website.

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