What is it?

Ecological understanding is a system level understanding of how the organisms are interconnected to form a locally stable community. As engineers we introduce mix of organisms to achieve certain goals within the system. An oldest example is agriculture, a practice in which we aim to have a crop species thrive. The ecological principles learned over time  as well as artificial organisms (robots) is making an impact in the agroecosystem engineering.  The courses in this focus area aims to build on the mechanistic understanding gained in the junior level and expand to system level understanding of ecology. Moreover, some of the courses teach the modern tools that can be used for ensuring viable agroecosystem.

How do we use it?

Many modern agricultural initiatives such as regenerative agriculture, digitizing the agricultural practice, collaboration with robots, controlled environment agriculture (cea) require training in dynamical system modelling, machine learning and robotics.

Career possibilities

Core courses to help you prepare

• BEE 3310 – Bio-Fluid Mechanics
• BEE 3500 – Heat and Mass Transfer in Biological Engineering

Focus Area courses to help you prepare (Fall 2025 or later)