This page lists Jacobs-affiliated courses taught during fall 2021. To see Jacobs Hall course listings from other semesters, please visit our primary course listings page.
This semester-long course introduces students to bioengineering project-based learning in small teams, with a strong emphasis on need-based solutions for real medical and research problems through prototype solution selection, design, and testing. The course is designed to provide a “capstone” design experience for bioengineering seniors. The course is structured around didactic lectures, and a textbook, from which assigned readings will be drawn, and supplemented by additional handouts, readings, and lecture material. Where appropriate, the syllabus includes guest lectures from clinicians and practicing engineers from academia and industry. The course includes active learning through organized activities, during which teams will participate in exercises meant to reinforce lecture material through direct application to the team design project.
This course provides students with an introduction and hands-on engineering design experience on electric mobility. Transportation is the largest energy end-use sector at 37%. Over 95% of transportation energy is fossil fuel based. Consequently, decarbonizing transportation is a critical step toward climate change mitigation. Electric mobility describes concepts for utilizing electric power technologies for transportation, such as batteries and electric motors. This includes electric cars, micro-mobility, electric aircraft, electric ships, and more. The course is divided into three parts: First, we examine the economic, environmental and ethical principles behind transitioning combustion-based drivetrains to electric drivetrains. Second, we introduce the fundamental principles behind electric drivetrains, including electric machines and batteries. Third, students will disassemble an electric scooter, discover how it works, and then create an improved design.
This introductory course aims to expose you to the mindset, skillset and toolset associated with design. It does so through guided applications to framing and solving problems in design, business and engineering. Specifically, you will learn approaches to noticing and observing, framing and reframing, imagining and designing, and experimenting and testing as well as for critique and reflection. You will also have a chance to apply those approaches in various sectors.
Good ideas alone are not the key to being a great designer or innovator. Rather, it is the strong process and communication skills that will make you stand out as a design practitioner and leader. In today’s landscape of product design and innovation, great visual communicators must know how to 1) effectively and confidently sketch by hand, 2) understand and utilize the basics of visual design, and 3) tell captivating and compelling stories. This course, offered in a project-based learning format, will give participants practice and confidence in their ability to communicate visually.
This course teaches concepts, skills and methods required to design, prototype, and fabricate physical objects. Each week relevant techniques in 2D and 3D modeling and fabrication are presented, along with basic electronics. Topics include a range of prototyping and fabrication techniques including laser-cutting, 3D modeling and 3D printing, soldering, and basic circuits.
In this one unit P/NP course, students will attend the weekly Design Field Notes speaker series, which features local design practitioners who share real-world stories about their projects, practices, and perspectives. Talks are scheduled most weeks during the semester; during any off weeks, students will engage in facilitated discussions.
As today’s most pressing challenges cut across disciplinary boundaries, designers need to articulate new methods for connecting conceptual knowledge with technical skills and develop new ways of integrating ideas from various perspectives and world views. Each year students in this colloquium-style course explore a topic in design. Invited lecturers present a relevant project or challenge from their professional careers at a given intersection of critical contemporary issues expressed at a particular scale of design practice. Speakers share background material or readings in advance, allowing students to arrive with thoughtful questions and discussion points. Students compose written reflections throughout and following each speaker.
This course introduces foundational design and technology frameworks and builds skill sets essential to the design of products, services, and experiences enabled by emerging technologies. It follows a human-centered design process that includes research, concept generation, and prototyping, with an emphasis on iteration and refinement. It also develops fluency across a range of core technologies, from fabrication to micro-controllers, and how to operationalize them within a design context. These activities are supported by regular practice of design critique. Students engage with a highly technical semester-long project to create a product-service system leveraging both hardware and digital technologies that addresses a well-defined need.
This course is an intensive, project-based course that focuses on design of interactive artifacts that use emerging technologies. Students are led through a sequence of projects of varying lengths (from one week to three weeks). This serves as the first in a two part sequence of courses (with DES INV 212) intended to develop student skills in designing with technology as a material. Projects include both individual and team activities, with teams frequently changing in size and composition.
This introductory course aims to expose you to the mindset, skillset and toolset associated with design. It does so through guided applications to framing and solving problems in design, business and engineering. Specifically, you will learn approaches to noticing and observing, framing and reframing, imagining and designing, and experimenting and testing as well as for critique and reflection. You will also have a chance to apply those approaches in various sectors.
This required course for the Designated Emphasis in Development Engineering will include projects and case studies, many related to projects at UC Berkeley, such as those associated with the Development Impact Labs (DIL). Student teams will work with preliminary data to define the problem. They will then collect and analyze interview and survey data from potential users and begin to design a solution. Students will explore how to use novel monitoring technologies and “big data” for product improvement and evaluation. The student teams will use the case studies (with improvements based on user feedback and data analysis) to develop a plan for scaling and evaluation with a rigorous controlled trial.
DBR is a practicum course. It is a forum for people interested in design to build something, try it out, and, along the way, learn a thing or two about learning. It begins with individuals’ own hunches about how to improve the teaching and learning of some concept or skill – students choose any content, context, age group, and media. Students will immediately begin acting on the hunch by building something, even a mock-up. The objective is to “re-invent” design based research through collaboratively negotiating the discursive constraints of sharing and reviewing projects from across diverse disciplines.
An introduction to manufacturing process technologies and the ways in which dimensional requirements for manufactured objects are precisely communicated, especially through graphical means. Fundamentals of cutting, casting, molding, additive manufacturing, and joining processes are introduced. Geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T), tolerance analysis for fabrication, concepts of process variability, and metrology techniques are introduced and practiced. 3-D visualization skills for engineering design are developed via sketching and presentation of 3-D geometries with 2-D engineering drawings. Computer-aided design software is used. Teamwork and effective communication are emphasized through lab activities and a design project.
The course emphasizes elementary modeling, numerical methods & their implementation on physical problems motivated by phenomena that students are likely to encounter in their careers, involving biomechanics, heat-transfer, structural analysis, control theory, fluid-flow, electrical conduction, diffusion, etc. This will help students develop intuition about the strengths and weaknesses of a variety of modeling & numerical methods, as well as develop intuition about modeling physical systems & strengths and weaknesses of a variety of numerical methods, including: Discretization of differential equations, Methods for solving nonlinear systems, Gradient-based methods and machine learning algorithms for optimization, stats & quantification.
Throughout the Fung Fellowship program, a diverse cohort of undergraduate students participate in a cross-disciplinary, experience-based curriculum that integrates design thinking and an immersive community experience. Fellows work in teams to develop technology solutions to address conservation and biodiversity challenges facing our plant and animal species and their ecosystems. This course provides a space for teamwork, project-based learning, and working with industry & community partners.
This experiential learning course, designed for upper-level undergraduates & graduate students, introduces key entrepreneurial concepts relevant to the high-technology world. Students are guided through how to take ideas to real products and start companies. Topics include the entrepreneurial process, customer discovery process, conducting market research, funding, entrepreneurial finance and creation of the material for investors. Students undertake intensive study of actual business situations through case studies, lectures and class discussions. Several guest speakers (entrepreneurs, investors, lawyers) are invited to speak to the class throughout the semester. The final outcome will be an executive summary of the business plan and a presentations to a panel of investors (VCs).
This course introduces students to the control of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The course will cover modeling and dynamics of aerial vehicles, and common control strategies. Laboratory exercises allow students to apply knowledge on a real system, by programming a microcontroller to control a UAV.
Introduction to design and realization of mechatronics systems. Micro computer architectures. Basic computer IO devices. Embedded microprocessor systems and control, IO programming such as analogue to digital converters, PWM, serial and parallel outputs. Electrical components such as power supplies, operational amplifiers, transformers and filters. Shielding and grounding. Design of electric, hydraulic and pneumatic actuators. Design of sensors. Design of power transmission systems. Kinematics and dynamics of robotics devices. Basic feedback design to create robustness and performance.
This course provides students with a basic understanding of robotic locomotion and the use of kinematics, dynamics, control algorithms, embedded microcomputers and mechanical components in designing artificial legs such as prosthetics, orthotics and exoskeletons.
This course explores the theory and practice of Tangible User Interfaces, a new approach to Human Computer Interaction that focuses on the physical interaction with computational media. The topics covered in the course include theoretical framework, design examples, enabling technologies, and evaluation of Tangible User Interfaces. Students will design and develop experimental Tangible User Interfaces using physical computing prototyping tools and write a final project report.
Throughout the Fung Fellowship program, a diverse cohort of undergraduate students participate in a cross-disciplinary, experience-based curriculum that integrates design thinking and an immersive community experience. Fellows work in teams to develop technology solutions to address the real-world public health challenges facing at-risk populations. This course provides a space for teamwork and project-based learning.