The final graduating requirement for UBC’s mechanical engineering students is a 45X Capstone Design project. The projects challenge students to apply the knowledge and skills they learned throughout their degree to real world problems. The best projects are proposed by industry clients and require solutions that can be implemented immediately.
The students work in small teams under the close supervision of a faculty advisor and, when possible, mentored by a practicing Professional Engineer from industry. Students are required to build a model of their designs, and if funds are available, a working prototype for the client.
MECH 45X is actually a cluster of 2-term, 6-credit courses for mechanical engineering students in their senior year: MECH 457 is a course for regular stream and Thermofluids-option students; MECH 458 is for Mechatronics-option students; and MECH 459 is for Biomedical Engineering-option students.
For more information, please contact:
Mike Van der Loos, Ph.D.vdl (at) mech.ubc.ca
604-827-4479
Mechanical engineering students’ innovations help people living with ALS
The World Health Organization predicts that neurodegenerative diseases like ALS will surpass cancer as the leading cause of death in Canada by 2040, but a number of mechanical engineering students at UBC aren’t waiting to help patients suffering from ALS. For the last three years, mechanical engineering undergraduates at UBC, with the support of the ALS society of BC, have been using their capstone design projects to help people with ALS.
