Capstone Design Experiences Available to CSE Seniors

Computer Engineering students are REQUIRED to participate in a 'capstone design experience', usually during their senior year. There are five such design experiences to choose from. Two are challenging design courses taught by the CSE department, while the three others are multidisciplinary design courses taught by the Aerospace, Electrical, and Mechanical Engineering faculty, respectively.

Computer Science students are NOT required to participate in a capstone design experience. However, they are welcome to enroll in any of these courses as an elective. In case of an over-subscription of any of the non-CSE courses, however, preference will obviously have to be given to Computer Engineering students.

CSE Capstone Design Experiences
CSE 422 - Computer System Design	This is a three credit course usually offered each Spring semester. Here, students are introduced to large system, board-level design. Designs typically involve commercially-available integrated circuites (and other components) as well as custom logic implemented in field-programmable gate arrays. Heavy use is made of the Mentor Graphics commercial CAD package. Printed circuit boards are fabricated in a lab maintained by the CSE and EE deparments.
CSE 462 - Introduction to VLSI Design	This is a three credit course taught each Fall semester. Students are introduced to the design of large, digital integrated circuits using an advanced CMOS technology. Heavy use is made of the Mentor Graphics commercial CAD package. Some student designs are fabricated for Notre Dame off-campus and returned to the student designers, usually during February or March of the following Spring semester.
Multi-Discipline Design Experiences
AE 441 - Aerospace System Design	This is a four credit course taught each Spring semester by the Aerospace Engineering faculty. Students are divided into design/build teams of five. Each team is responsible for the conception, proposal, design, and fabrication of a flying aircraft prototype. These aircraft have wingspans in the eight to twelve foot range, and typically have three microprocessor/microcomputers on board. At the end of the course, each team demonstrates its flying model in the Loftus building. Each enrolling Computer Engineering senior will be assigned to one such team where it is expected that he/she will be the "computing expert" for both hardware and software. But, obviously the CPEG student will learn much about aeronautics and mechanical fabrication along the way. For more information, see the course web page or contact Dr. Stephen Batill of the Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Department.
EE 430-440 - Senior Design	This is a two-plus-two credit hour design sequence (spanning both the Fall and Spring semesters) that is offered by the Electrical Engineering faculty. Students work in teams, interfacing with professional engineers on design projects proposed by off-campus engineering firms. These designs are taken from the concept, proposal, and design stages through to the fabtication, testing, documentation, and final reporting stages. Most of these projects have one or more computing aspects, so each Computer Engineering student would be assigned to a team that is otherwise composed of Electrical Engineering students. For more information, contact Dr. Gary Bernstein of the Electrical Engineering Department.
ME 470 - Mechanical System Design	This is a three credit course offered by the Mechanical Engineering faculty in both the Fall and Spring semesters. Students are divided into design/build teams of six. Each team is responsible for the conception, proposal, design, and fabrication of a prototype project specified by the instructor. During a recent offering of this course, design teams worked on electric-powered rolling vehicles that used sonor antennae to locate objects that the vehicle was supposed to "find" and move toward. In any case, ME 470 design projects almost always involve computer hardware and software, so each enrolling Computer Engineering senios will be assigned to one such team where it is expected that he/she will be the "computing expert". For more information, see the course web page or contact Dr. Stephen Batill of the Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Department.