Seth Fraden, Professor of Physics, Co-Chair of Engineering: Every department at Brandeis touches upon engineering in their research and we are nationally competitive in many of those fields. It’s logical to have a disciplinary program for formal training in order to integrate all these different efforts going throughout the university.
Avi Rodal, Professor of Biology, Co-Chair of Engineering: It’s really important that our education programs integrate really well with the research that we already have going on at Brandeis. We have just fantastic, world-class research in the life sciences, in materials science, and so we're hoping to create this new cohort of Brandeis students who really have the tools and skills to go out and make technological innovations in the world.
Greg Roitbourd '26: This class embodies the concept of STEAM in the best way possible, because we get to do what we want to do with the resources that we have. Having this as the pilot course for the engineering program is kind of a step-forward, and it allows the program to grow.
Rodal: Rather than having a whole new engineering school or an engineering department, which silos engineers off into a domain of their own, we're going to take those engineers, embed them into our existing science departments where we're doing this fantastic research. But at the same time, those undergraduates are going to be embedded in a liberal arts environment, and incorporate research projects and attack societal problems, really focusing on evidence-based social benefit and context derived from all of our teaching and scholarship and education in social sciences, humanities, and creative arts, and business to have students with the identity of engineers working in this liberal arts and societal context.
Ian Roy, Adjunct Professor, Founding Head, Brandeis MakerLab: So when we thought about the big problems in the world and things Brandeis is good at, we came up with this umbrella of "design to repair the world." So we're using these tools to leave the world better than we found it. And really, we don't know what problems these cohorts of students are going to tackle, so a lot of the methodology is, "What do we do when we don't know what to do?"
Rodal: And so rather than trying to cover specific engineering disciplines like mechanical engineering and civil engineering, our goal is to take our students and give them a foundation in engineering thinking, and design, and practice.
Fraden: The engineering mindset is to find solutions to problems, and so I'd like to see this realized throughout the departments. I'd like to see students in business learn how to create companies and to put them in practice. I'd like to see scientists think about how to build technologies as a bridge to society.
Roy: I think with the link to the foundational science breakthroughs on campus, the entrepreneurial system in the Business School, the big problems in social policy around the Heller School, and this new Engineering Science Program, there's a potential to really change the world, and really have Brandeis students lead with their hearts, but then build things with their hands and minds.
Rodal: We're a small community of people who know each other very well, and these kinds of spontaneous interactions are what lead to amazing breakthroughs. So we think that Brandeis presents a really unique environment.
Ifigenia Oxyzolou '26: And I think what's particularly amazing about Brandeis is that we're a small liberal arts college so you can kind of do a little bit of everything, and it's part of why I chose to not go to an engineering school, and come to a school like this.