Master in Design Engineering

The Master in Design Engineering (MDE) program prepares the next generation of leaders to create transformative solutions that positively improve society. The integrated fields of design and engineering are uniquely positioned to address the world’s toughest challenges.

Our world faces increasingly complex, often unpredictable dilemmas of consequence to human lives and living environments, including rapid urbanization, climate change, and resource scarcity. These and other problems demand a deep and systems-level understanding of the underlying problem architecture, which in turn enables innovative, multi-faceted solutions that transcend disciplines and scales. The MDE program prepares innovators who operate both creatively and analytically, think strategically, and collaborate broadly. MDE graduates lead change and advance novel, real-world solutions.

The Master in Design Engineering is a collaborative degree program between the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Our world faces increasingly complex, often unpredictable dilemmas of consequence to human lives and living environments, including rapid urbanization, ecological changes, and resource scarcity. These and other problems demand a deep understanding of the underlying problem architecture, which in turn enables innovative, multi-faceted solutions that transcend disciplines and scales. By bridging the gaps between academic fields and practical, real-world stakeholders, the MDE program prepares a new generation of innovators who operate both creatively and analytically, think strategically, and collaborate broadly. MDE graduates are capable of leading change and advancing novel, real-world solutions.

The newly integrated fields of design and engineering are uniquely positioned to address challenges that involve interactions of natural, social, and informational systems. The design engineering toolkit encompasses multi-layered, analytical approaches, networked objects and environments, soft and hard infrastructures, and strategic plans, all of which can be applied to address grand challenges and mitigate threats to our built and natural environment. 

Never before have two Harvard schools established a collaborative degree of this nature, built from the ground up by design and engineering faculty, and guided by an External Advisory Board of industry leaders. The structure of the program, from its curriculum to community, is designed to foster interaction and critical thinking across disciplines, which in turn means graduates better equipped to face complex problems.