Fall 2024 Message from the Dean

Good engineering is almost by definition creative. We pursue and envision solutions to some of the most complex and urgent problems we are facing around sustainability, health and societal impacts of technology. But how does this somewhat illusive concept of “creativity” get infused into the engineering curriculum? This past year, I have spent time thinking about this very question.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t need our students to become great artists. But I do want them to have the creative confidence of standing in front of a blank canvas and imagining something new and bold – and to will new solutions and designs into existence. To that end, we have rolled out a few experiments in the Samueli School of Engineering, trying to capture this notion of “creative confidence.” One inspirational and fun example of this is the E-SONIC competition that we held jointly with the UCI Claire Trevor School of the Arts and the Pacific Symphony during the 23-24 academic year. E-SONIC stands for Engineering-Symphonic Orchestra New Instrument Competition, and the original idea was to have student teams design and showcase never-before-seen instruments. We had really no idea what to expect from this program, but I am happy to report that the result exceeded all expectations.

But creative confidence can mean so much more than forays into the arts. It can mean the ability to envision commercial opportunities for our research inventions. Or, it can mean daring to take the leap, as a faculty member, from the familiar settings of an academic lab into the unstructured and unchartered startup world. We are seeing an increasing number of faculty, researchers and students take this leap.

The ability to go from lab to market in a major and structurally well-defined way was identified as one of the key goals in our recent strategic plan. The reason why this played such a prominent role in the plan is that we want to make sure that what happens in our labs and our classrooms is relevant and has impact. This means that our innovations cannot stay hidden and bottled up, but are given opportunities to transition from campus and out into the world. And only through a strong, vibrant and structurally robust lab-to-market culture can we make that transition happen at scale. I’m pleased to say that we’ve made strides in this regard and will continue to encourage in our students and faculty the creative confidence that is required to take this leap.

Best,

Magnus Egerstedt, Ph.D.
Stacey Nicholas Dean of Engineering
UCI Samueli School of Engineering