Waterloo Engineering seeks to admit well-rounded students, providing them with the resources necessary to create an education with as much breadth and depth as they desire through the combination of programs, options, and specializations. Since engineering programs are very structured, students should decide if they are interested in taking options as they enter second year. Some options require advanced planning and extra courses on top of your scheduled workload.
Please note that some options are limited to students in specific programs, while some programs limit the options available to students. Options are not available to Architecture students.
- Artificial Intelligence: Study and advance ever-greater degrees of efficacy, reliability, and safety, the ways in which machines and systems perceive, see, speak, decide, respond, act, and plan.
- Biomechanics: Study solutions to health-care problems, birth defect prevention, medical imaging, prosthesis design, and ergonomics.
- Computer Engineering: Develop skills in the areas of logic, digital hardware, operating systems, computing systems, databases, networks, and security and privacy.
- Computing: Enrich your studies with knowledge in programming, data structures and algorithms, digital systems, human-computer interaction, and more.
- Entrepreneurship: Pursue an innovative pathway in engineering, and enrich your studies with courses in venture creation and corporate entrepreneurship.
- Environmental Engineering: Study pollution control, waste disposal, and health and sanitation.
- Life Sciences: Understand the structure and function of biological systems (choice of four sub-options)s:
- Molecular & Cell Biology
- Environmental/Ecological Science
- Biophysical Science
- Biochemical Science
- Management Sciences: Solve management problems using social sciences and mathematical models.
- Mechatronics: Design and develop “thinking” machines and devices.
- Physical Sciences: Understand the basic physical sciences that lay behind many engineering applications: (choice of three sub-options):
- Physics
- Chemistry
- Earth & Environmental Sciences
- Software Engineering: Learn about the design, implementation, and maintenance of large-scale software systems. Offered jointly by the Faculties of Engineering and Mathematics.
- Statistics: Gain a broad background in applied statistics, including multiple regression, quality control, experimental design, and applied probability.
For more on Options and Electives, visit the Undergraduate Studies Academic Calendar