Why Systems Design Engineering?
Solving engineering problems always involves the modification or creation of systems. In this program, you’ll examine ecological, transportation, physiological, energy and communication systems and through specialized courses, you’ll learn to develop innovative solutions to the problems you uncover.
Our Systems Design Engineering program is a multidisciplinary program that integrates engineering, design and human factors to create innovative solutions to complex problems. This program is designed to develop engineers who can think holistically, considering the interactions between various system components, and who are equipped to work in diverse fields ranging from robotics and biomedical engineering to environmental systems and artificial intelligence. Central to the program is the emphasis on design. You'll engage in numerous design projects throughout your studies, learning to apply design thinking and systems methodologies to real-world challenges.
Courses in Systems Design Engineering
In your first year, you'll take foundational courses exploring subjects such as design, systems, computation and human factors in math and computation to give you the base for your upper-year classes. You will develop design-thinking skills by engaging in design workshops. Often working in teams, you will learn to implement solutions by creating, testing and evaluating prototypes – everything from robotics to user interface design and complex systems, including energy and transportation.
Sample first-year courses
This is a sample schedule. Courses are subject to change.
| Fall Term (September to December) | Spring Term (May to August) |
|---|---|
Upper year courses
For information about courses past your first year, check out the Undergraduate Academic Calendar.
Customize your degree with options and specializations
Options
Options are a way to provide you with a path to expand your degree and get a secondary emphasis in another subject or area. Students should decide if they are interested in taking options as they enter second year. Some available options are:
Specializations
A specialization is recognition of selected elective courses within your degree. Specialization offerings are unique to your engineering program and are listed on your diploma. Specializations that are available to Systems Design Engineering students include:
Co-op for Systems Design Engineering students
You’ll have an unrivalled opportunity to gain paid work experience before you even graduate. We’ll help you navigate job applications, résumés, and interviews; you’ll have the added benefit of trying out different roles and/or industries to find the one that fits you while building your work experience and reinforcing your in-class learning out in the real world. It all adds up to a competitive advantage after graduation.
Starting in first year, you'll normally alternate between school and work every four months, integrating your classroom learning with real-world experience. You can return to the same employer for a couple of work terms to gain greater knowledge and responsibility or work for different employers to get a broad range of experience.
| Year | September to December (Fall) | January to April (Winter) | May to August (Spring) |
|---|---|---|---|
| First | Study | Co-op | Study |
| Second | Co-op | Study | Co-op |
| Third | Study | Co-op | Study |
| Fourth | Co-op | Study | Co-op |
| Fifth | Study | Study | - |
Your first work term will be halfway through first year. Learn more about co-op.
Example co-op positions for Systems Design Engineering students
- Product design/development
- Rapid prototype software developer
- Product manager
- User experience designer
- Application developer
- Control systems software designer co-op
- Machine learning developer
- QA analyst
- Automation engineer
- Systems software engineer
Previous Engineering co-op student of the year
Josh Bradshaw, Systems Design Engineering student
During his co-op term at Citylitics, Josh:
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Changed Citylitics's most important codebase, critical to the company’s business, to a self-learning autonomous system, improving output to eight seconds from 11 minutes. This resulted in 60% increase in the number of clients the company can handle.
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Found and fixed small flaws in process for creating digital profiles of wastewater treatment. These fixes saved other staff four to five hours of work each week and one day a week for himself.
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Received Technology Co-op Achievement award and Impact Award in recognition for the amount of time and money he saved for CIBC.
Example careers for Systems Design Engineering graduates
- Hardware program manager
- User experience designer
- Transportation planner
- Project design engineer
- Solutions engineer
- Product developer
- Project lead
Capstone design projects in Systems Design Engineering
Capstone Design is the culmination of the engineering undergraduate student experience, creating a blueprint for innovation in engineering design.
Supported by numerous awards, Capstone Design provides Waterloo Engineering students with the unique opportunity to conceptualize and design a project related to their chosen discipline.
A requirement for completion of their degrees, Capstone Design challenges students teams to push their own boundaries, and apply the knowledge and skills learned in the classroom and on co-op work terms. It reinforces the concepts of teamwork, project management, research and development.
For a full list of previous capstone design projects, see our Capstone Design website.
SynapSync (Capstone 2024)
Gabrielle Chan, Chamod Gamage, Andy Lee, Lukas Weber, Bryan Yam
Diagnosing cognitive disorders like Alzheimer's is challenging due to the absence of clear physiological symptoms. Existing diagnostics rely on subjective observations and self-reporting. Correlating the brain's physical degradation against cognitive disorders needs to be studied. SynapSync closes this gap. It synchronizes neuroimaging with cognitive test results, correlating brain activity with human behavior. This enables researchers to study cognition and the physiological aspects of cognitive disorders more effectively.
Fridge Friends (Capstone 2024)
Sharon Chatha, Cormac Cureton, Keaton Lees, Kelly Ng
Sick of food going bad in your fridge? Fridge Friends revolutionizes how household food inventory is managed. The tool uses computer vision to track the fridge's inventory, and uses gas sensors to alert users prior to food spoilage. These real-time insights are delivered to users via a mobile app. The goal of the project is to empower individuals to take control of their food consumption and reduce the environmental impact associated with wasted groceries.
Student design teams
The Sedra Student Design Centre consists of over 20,000 square feet of space dedicated to design teams and student projects. There are more than two dozen design teams, all of which are student-led, and many of which represent Waterloo internationally.
Some examples include:
Engineers Without Boarders
Engineers Without Borders (EWB) is an organization that work towards ending poverty within the world. The UW chapter is committed to developing leaders with the skills and perspective necessary to create sustainable social change, especially focusing on Indigenous communities within Canada.
UW Blueprint
UW Blueprint strives to make technology accessible and useful for those who create communities and promote public welfare. We are a group of students dedicated to building and promoting technology for social good. We partner with non-profits to provide technology services such as web applications, mobile applications and analysis tools—free of charge.
Alternative Protein Project
The Waterloo Alternative Protein Project is the first chapter of the Good Food Institute’s Alt. Protein Project in Canada. The project aims to create a sustainable and secure food system through research, entrepreneurship, and innovation.
Systems Design Engineering alumni
Sylvia Ng
Sylvia (class of 2004) has done a number of things which include: analytics, marketing, growth, and product at companies like Google, eBay, 500px and Shopify. She is now the CEO of ReturnBear, an e-commerce returns business. Sylvia shared "I have always wanted to do something at the intersection of art and science. I eventually landed on Systems Design engineering which allows me to build creative things. Nowadays I like to think that I’ve managed to merge my creative and analytical sides through building businesses."
Michael Litt & Devon Galloway
For their fourth-year Capstone design project, Michael (class of 2011) and Devon (class of 2010) worked on an idea that formed the basis of their video-sharing startup, Vidyard. Michael credits part of their success to the skills learned in the Systems Design Engineering program, “it helps you think at a level that is truly solution oriented. You're equipped with this mindset of breaking down a problem into its solvable components. That, I think, is an often-overlooked aspect of what an engineering degree is at the University of Waterloo.”
Ellen McGee
Ellen (class of 2022), was unsure what she wanted to study but after visiting the fall open house and listening to the talk on Systems Design Engineering (SYDE), she knew the program was for her. Saying "I was excited to learn about different aspects of engineering and I liked how SYDE allowed you to be creative while solving problems every term with a design course.” After graduating as valedictorian of her class, Ellen returned to Seattle to work as a programs manager at Microsoft, where she was hired after a successful final co-op term.