New Engineering Education Transformation

Edward Crawley, PhD
Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics & Ford Professor of Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology



Overview: The New Engineering Education Transformation is an undertaking of the School of Engineering of MIT. The aim is to rethink engineering education – what students learn and how students learn – in a fundamental way across the school. We seek to educate our students to be the makers and discoverers of the machines they will build in the middle of their careers – the new machines and systems. We use the term “machines” generally to describe all of the things that engineers build. These machines will integrate many disciplines, be complex and networked, autonomous and support a sustainable environment. The proposed concept is to design an interdepartmental project-centric curriculum, with a series of 4-5 projects focused on the new machines. We invite you to join us as we explore MIT’s approach to the re-thinking of engineering education.

Biography: Edward Crawley, PhD

Edward Crawley is the Ford Professor of Engineering and a Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. He has served as the founding President of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) in Moscow, the Director of the Cambridge (UK) MIT Institute and the Head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT.

Dr. Crawley’s research has focused on architecture in complex technical systems. His recent book – System Architecture: Strategy and Product Development for Complex Systems – was published by Pearson (2016).

From 2000 to 2012 he served as founding co-director of CDIO and was the lead author of Rethinking Engineering Education, the CDIO Approach (second edition, Springer 2014). For his contributions to engineering education he received the Gordon Prize of the NAE.

Dr. Crawley is a Fellow of the AIAA, the Royal Aeronautical Society and a member of the International Academy of Astronautics. He is a member of national academies in Sweden, the UK, China, Russia and the US. He received an S.B. (1976), S.M. (1978) and Sc.D. (1981), all from MIT.