The College of Engineering has six academic departments: the Roy J. Carver Department of Biomedical Engineering and the departments of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Industrial and Systems Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering.

Moreover, research and educational activities of the college are supported by four research centers and institutes: the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, the Iowa Institute for Biomedical Imaging, IIHR—Hydroscience and Engineering, and the Iowa Technology Institute.

Undergraduate Programs of Study

The College of Engineering offers the Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE) with majors in biomedical, chemical, civil, computer, electrical, environmental, industrial, and mechanical engineering, and a BSE with a major in computer science and engineering.

For detailed information regarding each BSE major, please see the respective sections in the catalog.

The college also offers combined undergraduate degree programs with the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Tippie College of Business; a dual degree with the University of Northern Iowa; a combined BSE/master's degree program in each engineering discipline; and combined BSE/master's degrees with the Department of Computer Science, the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health, and the School of Planning and Public Affairs. For additional information, see Combined and Dual Degrees in the Bachelor of Science in Engineering, BSE section of the catalog.

In addition, the College of Engineering offers minors in artificial intelligence: theory, methods, and applications, electrical engineering, environmental engineering, human systems engineering, and industrial and systems engineering. The college also offers a Certificate in Applied Climate Science and Energy Technologies, the undergraduate Certificate in Artificial Intelligence, Modeling and Simulation in Engineering, a Certificate in Naval Science and Technology, and partners with the Tippie College of Business to offer a Certificate in Technological Entrepreneurship for undergraduate engineering students.

Graduate Programs of Study

The College of Engineering offers graduate degree programs, the Master of Science (MS) and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), in biomedical engineering, chemical and biochemical engineering, civil and environmental engineering, electrical and computer engineering, industrial engineering, and mechanical engineering. See the College of Engineering Graduate Studies website for an overview, and the department sections in the catalog for information about specific areas of research and study, admission and degree requirements, and financial support for the graduate programs. The College of Engineering also offers the graduate Certificate in Artificial Intelligence, Modeling and Simulation in Engineering, and a graduate Certificate in Sustainable Water Development.

College of Engineering Facilities

Seamans Center for the Engineering Arts and Sciences

The Seamans Center for the Engineering Arts and Sciences is home to the College of Engineering. In addition to classrooms, conference rooms, instructional laboratories, and faculty offices, the Seamans Center houses the Lichtenberger Engineering Library, the Hanson Center for Communication, Engineering Design and Fabrication shop, The Workbench, student workspaces, computational facilities, and research laboratories. A number of classrooms and open spaces located throughout the building were designed to readily accommodate collaborative work.

Engineering Student Services

The professional staff of Engineering Student Services administers student services for the College of Engineering, including advising, tutoring, student records, and career services.

Engineering Career Services

Engineering Career Services develops and promotes experiential education and professional opportunities for students in the College of Engineering. Professional staff coordinate the college's co-op and internship program, engage in employer outreach, and provide opportunities for students to network with employers, including engineering career fairs and other programming related to career development.

Engineering Career Services connects students with experiential learning and professional opportunities that support their development as emerging engineers. Staff coordinate the college’s co-op and internship program, sustain strong employer relationships, and offer a variety of opportunities for students to engage with industry, including engineering career fairs and additional career-focused programming. The office provides individual advising on resumes, job and internship search strategies, interviewing, and evaluating job offers. Engineering Career Services works closely with the Pomerantz Career Center to facilitate on-campus interviewing, collect postgraduation data, and manage the university’s recruiting system, Handshake.

Leadership, Ethics, and Professional Pathways (LEAPP)

The LEaPP Academy aims to provide students with the knowledge, skills, and perspectives that enhance their long-term success, make them valuable leaders to the companies that employ them, and develop them as ethically and globally aware citizens of the world. LEaPP Scholars complete a number of cocurricular activities to earn leadership, ethical thinking, and professional development credentials. Individuals who complete the LEaPP Academy receive collegiate accolades and are honored with graduation cords specific to the LEaPP Program. The LEaPP Academy is designed to be accessible no matter the semester or timeline in which a student joins; each piece is individualized and self-led to offer the best experience to each student based on their needs.

Hanson Center for Communication

The Hanson Center for Communication is an endowed program that works closely with engineering faculty to train students in verbal and written communication throughout the curriculum. The center helps create, manage, and grade writing and presentation assignments and provides training to students, tutors, and faculty on best practices for communication. In addition, the Hanson Center for Communication is home to an innovative peer training center that conducts hundreds of one-on-one and team tutoring sessions each year. The center helps review lab reports, topical papers, technical essays, and technical presentations each semester. Peer tutors are undergraduate students who have shown exceptional promise as communicators and provide individualized feedback throughout the writing and presentation process. In addressing global concerns (organization, clarity, and context), peer tutors help their fellow students transform rough drafts into persuasive, logical documents and presentations.

Global Engineering

Many of today’s top employers are seeking engineering graduates with global experiences and competencies who can effectively interact with colleagues and customers around the world. Successful engineers are able to communicate across cultures, work on diverse teams, and productively deal with issues and conflicts arising from differences.

University of Iowa engineering students have a variety of opportunities to study, pursue internships, or conduct research abroad. Students can enroll in credit-bearing courses in English to fulfill engineering or general education requirements or earn credits toward a minor in another discipline or world language. In addition to completing coursework abroad, engineering students can pursue experiential opportunities abroad, including global internships, conducting independent research in other countries, and volunteering. For more information, see Study Abroad on the College of Engineering website. The College of Engineering and International Programs supports these endeavors by offering students a variety of scholarships and funding.

Engineering Computer Services

Engineering Computer Services (ECS) provides spaces and technology administration for curricular, administrative, and research computing at the College of Engineering. The college has three drop-in computer labs with 225 high-end Linux and Windows computer workstations with graphics processing unit (GPU) support, including a 25-seat computer classroom, two 45-seat machine learning and virtual reality-capable computer classrooms, and a 400-seat virtual computer lab with GPU support that students can access from the internet. Numerous public domain and commercial engineering applications support the full range of engineering classes. Software is regularly upgraded, and hardware is refreshed at least every four years. The college's computer labs are open 24 hours a day, every day of the year.

Engineering Design and Fabrication

Engineering Design and Fabrication (EDF) is the College of Engineering’s one-stop destination for hands-on innovation. Combining expert machining and electronics services, the shop empowers students, faculty, and researchers to design, prototype, and build with confidence — using industry-grade tools, expert guidance, and a collaborative, safety-first environment. The shop has a high-resolution 3D scanner, commercial 3D printers, a waterjet, a full wood shop, welding, and multi-axis CNC machines.

Engineering Maker Space

The Engineering Maker Space is a low-tech makerspace housed in the lower level of Burge Residence Hall, home to the People in Engineering (PIE) Living Learning Community. The goal was to create a collaborative space for engineering students, namely first-year students, to explore, create, and innovate. The makerspace consists of an open area for hands-on work and collaboration; a wet-room; textile space; and a room hosting a series of 3D printers. The space is designed to offer first-year students an opportunity to engage in hands-on activities that are essential for their courses and those not typically included in the engineering curriculum. Students utilize the space not only for projects, but as a study area, and to attend workshops conducted by faculty, professional guests, and fellow students.

The Workbench

The Workbench, located in 2028 SC, is a space dedicated for engineering students to collaborate on projects. It is equipped with tools and equipment to support projects as well as CNC simulators for training. The space was designed to ignite innovation, foster collaboration, and provide hands-on learning experiences within the Iowa Engineering community. Just steps away from the Design Studio (2040 SC), this space is available to students in ENGR:1100 Introduction to Engineering Problem Solving when their needs surpass those of the classroom but do not require the specialized equipment housed in Engineering Design and Fabrication. It will also serve as a valuable resource for students working on class or senior design projects, offering a dynamic environment to bring ideas to life. 

Lichtenberger Engineering Library

The Lichtenberger Engineering Library is a branch of the University of Iowa Libraries System and is a center of engineering college activity. Its collection includes books (including required course textbooks), tools, equipment, and electronic resources to assist at any stage of research on projects both big and small. Staff are trained to help locate information and provide training on a wide variety of skills, including patent searching, data management, tool usage, and more. The Engineering Library is a designated Patent and Trademark Resource Center by the United States Patent and Trademark Resources Center. 

The Engineering Library, located next to the Student Commons in the Seamans Center, provides access to computer workstations, quiet study in the lower level, and group study space where students may reserve a private room for their work. The Engineering Library also houses the Creative Space, a space for students to imagine, tinker, design, and create with virtual reality, 3D scanners, and more.

NEXUS

NEXUS, where engineering meets art. The NEXUS space provides a collaborative environment for creativity. The program hosts an art club (i.e., Artineers), workshops throughout the year, and collaborates on projects such as the annual engineering design competition. Moreover, the facility has been used for senior design projects for multiple programs.  

College of Engineering Research Centers

Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology

The Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (CBCB) is a multidisciplinary research center dedicated to applying high performance networking and computing to basic life science and applied biomedical research. With faculty and students representing more than 20 traditional disciplines, the CBCB has contributed to the understanding of inherited human diseases, including blinding eye disease, cancer, deafness, diabetes, autism, schizophrenia, hypertension, obesity, and heart disease. For almost 20 years, the CBCB has been at the cutting edge of high-throughput molecular discovery and interpretation in transcriptomics, genomics, and proteomics. At the confluence of these efforts lies the current wavefront of personalized genomic medicine, in which the CBCB plays a central role in partnership with labs, centers, and institutes across the university's Carver College of Medicine and basic science programs across campus. The CBCB has also been a center for industry start-ups and partnerships with numerous commercial enterprises. The center is jointly sponsored by the College of Engineering and the Carver College of Medicine.

Iowa Institute for Biomedical Imaging

The Iowa Institute for Biomedical Imaging conducts research in the following areas: medical imaging (CT, MR, OCT, PET, SPECT, ultrasound, multimodality imaging), medical image analysis and computer-aided diagnosis; cardiovascular image analysis (angiography-intravascular ultrasound data fusion, MR image analysis of congenital heart disease, coronary CT image analysis, early detection of cardiovascular disease); pulmonary image analysis (CT and MR image analysis of the lung); cell image analysis (cell tracking, shape analysis); virtual surgery planning (augmented reality for surgical planning); cancer-related assessment of tumor progression/regression; staging; general machine learning; and disease/treatment outcome prediction. The institute is sponsored by the College of Engineering and the Carver College of Medicine.

IIHR—Hydroscience and Engineering

IIHR—Hydroscience and Engineering (IIHR) is a world-renowned center with more than 100 years of education, research, and public service focusing on hydraulic engineering and fluid mechanics. Based in the C. Maxwell Stanley Hydraulics Laboratory, a five-story red brick building on the banks of the Iowa River, IIHR is a unit of the College of Engineering. IIHR students, faculty members, research engineers and scientists, and staff work together to understand and manage one of the world’s greatest resources—water. Students from around the world benefit from IIHR’s comprehensive multidisciplinary approach, which includes basic fluid mechanics, laboratory experimentation, fieldwork and data collection, and computational modeling.

IIHR research activities include fluid dynamics (ship hydrodynamics, renewable energy, multi-phase flow, heat and mass transfer, experimental and computational fluid dynamics); environmental hydraulics (river hydraulics, hydraulic structures, fish passage, nutrient and sediment transport, wind energy and hydropower, water quantity and quality monitoring); water and air resources (air pollution, hydrology, hydrometeorology, watershed monitoring, remote sensing, hydroinformatics); and environmental engineering and sciences (wastewater treatment, surface and groundwater chemistry, remediation, climate change, emerging and organic contaminants). IIHR’s advanced facilities and instrumentation spans more than 120,000 square feet of space across 10 buildings that supports research and education initiatives.

In 2009, the Iowa Flood Center was founded at IIHR as the only academic center devoted solely to flood-related research and education. The Iowa Geological Survey joined IIHR in 2014, bringing new expertise in Iowa's subsurface resources, groundwater modeling, innovative geophysical skills, and more. Together, these programs strengthen IIHR’s expertise and impact on serving Iowans with tools and information to effectively manage natural resources.

Students gain hands-on experience through close cooperation with faculty and staff on research projects funded by industry, government, and other organizations.

Iowa Technology Institute

The Iowa Technology Institute (ITI) conducts basic and applied research. The mission is to cultivate collaboration across disciplines, invent advanced technologies, and conduct trailblazing research in design, simulation, and experimentation that enables a safer and more productive future. ITI provides a unique environment for research and development for faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, research fellows, and professional scientists. ITI spans more than 20 laboratories and centers, including the Operator Performance Laboratory, the Virtual Soldier Research program, the Atmospheric and Environmental Research Lab, the Iowa Atmospheric Sensor Development Laboratory, and the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research (CGRER).

Research at ITI focuses on flight testing, autonomous systems, advanced manufacturing and materials, human modeling and simulation, aerospace technology, biotechnology, environment, energy, systems, and sensors. Scientists conduct experiments in flight testing, human performance, robotics, biomedical and biochemical research, machine learning, smart sensors, remote sensing, renewable energy, and modeling of environmental change.

High School Program

FIRST Tech Challenge

For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) gives students the opportunity for real-world application of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) concepts. Students participate in an atmosphere that encourages team building, entrepreneurship, and sportsmanship. FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) allows teams of students to be responsible for designing, building, and programming robots to compete in an alliance format against other teams. Teams are required to develop strategies and build robots based on sound engineering principles. Students learn about working in a team environment, effective communication skills, the ability to fail and succeed at the same time, and competing fairly while being supportive of their competition.

The engineering course requirements for engineering majors are outlined in their respective catalog sections. Each undergraduate program builds upon a core program; see the Bachelor of Science in Engineering in the catalog. Not all engineering core courses listed are required for each engineering major. Core program courses are intended for College of Engineering students. Undergraduate students in other disciplines who wish to register for core engineering courses should complete a special permission form.

Engineering Courses