Western University Courses

Chemical and Biochemical

The Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Department fosters a challenging and rewarding study environment to prepare students for a successful educational or industrial career.

At the undergraduate level, the department offers three programs:

Chemical Engineering Program with five options :

• General Chemical Engineering (4 years)
• Biochemical and Environmental Engineering (4 years)
• Chemical Engineering with Management (5 years)
• Chemical Engineering with Law (6 years)

Green Process Engineering with three options :

• Green Process Engineering (4 years)
• Green Process Engineering with Management (5 years)
• Green Process Engineering with Law (6 years)

Chemical Engineering International Collaborative Undergraduate Degree Program.

Students pursuing a Chemical Engineering International Collaborative Undergraduate Degree Program receive a BESc. in Chemical Engineering (International collaboration) degree from Western and another Degree from their home institution in China.

The department has several groundbreaking courses at the graduate level, apart from research-based master’s and doctoral curriculum such as the Accelerated Master’s program or programs that involve internships in industry.

Graduate programs that are available in the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering include:

• Course-based Master of Engineering (MEng)
• Thesis-based Master of Engineering Science (MESc)
• Thesis-based Accelerated Masters Program
• Thesis-based Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

List of Research Centers :

• Chemical Reactor Engineering Centre (CREC)
• The Institute for Chemicals and Fuels from Alternative Resources (ICFAR)
• The Particle Technology Research Centre (PTRC)

Areas of Research :

• Biomaterials and Biochemical Engineering
• Environmental and Green Engineering
• Particle Technologies and Fluidization
• Macromolecular and Materials Engineering
• Reaction and Process Systems Engineering
• Water and Energy

Civil and Environment

The Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Western is ranked #1 in Canada and #13 worldwide, according to Shanghai Ranking's Global Ranking for Civil Engineering in 2017. Because of its excellent academic curricula, award-winning professors and state-of-the-art facilities,  the department at Western is known for its excellence nationally and internationally.

The department offers a range of courses to choose from for undergraduates and graduates. The undergraduate program in Civil Engineering and International Development, which exposes students of Western Engineering to the complex social, ecological, political and economic issues affecting engineering, is particularly relevant to the curriculum at Western.

The undergraduate program options available in the department are:

• Structural Engineering
• Environmental Engineering
• International Development with Structural
• Environmental Engineering

The department also offers graduate programs including course-based Master of Engineering (MEng); research-based Master of Engineering Science (MESc) and PhD.

Whether your emphasis is on research and innovation, gaining technical knowledge in a particular field, or expanding your professional portfolio through graduate studies, the graduate degrees offered in CEE certainly help you achieve your educational objectives.

Areas of Research

• Environmental and Water Resources
• Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental
• Structural and Infrastructural
• Wind Engineering and Environmental Fluid Mechanics

List of Labs

• Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory
• Centre for Environment and Sustainability
• Facility for Intelligent Decision Support
• Geotechnical Research Centre
• Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR)
• Insurance Research Lab for Better Homes
• RESTORE
• WindEEE Research Institute

Electrical and Computer

The faculty members of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering are involved in technology research, offering opportunities for students to fully explore their abilities. The department provides undergraduate degree programs in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, and Mechatronic Systems Engineering with a variety of options. With world class institutions like Ivey Business School and the Schulich School of Medicine at Western, there is also the option of concurrent degree programs with Business, Medicine, Law and Computer Science.

The ECE Department offers graduate programs at the masters (M.E.Sc. and M.Eng.) and doctoral (Ph.D) levels in the following research areas:

• Biomedical Systems
• Communications Systems and Data Networking
• Applied Electrostatics And Electromagnetics
• Microsystems and Digital Signal Processing
• Power Systems Engineering
• Robotics and Control
• Software Engineering

MESc is a research-oriented degree, while MEng Program is a Profession-Oriented or a course-based Program. The M.Eng degree helps the student within a limited time span to extend and improve their learning. This degree also provides an opportunity for practicing engineers to update their technical knowledge to meet the demands of their profession involving technological advances. The Ph.D. program prepares the student for a career in R&D, research, or highly specialized technical advice.

Students under this programme develop the ability to perform independent research and write publication research papers.

ECE students have access to excellent research centers and services including:

• Robarts Research Institute (RRI)
• The Canadian Surgical Technologies and Advanced Robotics (CSTAR) research centre
• The Lawson Health Research Institute (LHRI), the Department of Medical Biophysics
• The Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry
• Nanofabrication Facility
• Western Institute for Nanomaterials Science (WINS)

They also have access to Power Systems Real Time Digital Simulator (RTDS), a Real Time Nuclear Power Plant Simulator, and several state-of-the-art Distributed Control Systems of industrial quality made possible by special industrial and government support.

Areas of Research 

• Applied Electrostatics and Electromagnetics
• Biomedical Systems
• Computer-Assisted Medical Intervention (NSERC)
• Communication Systems and Data Networking
• Microsystems and Digital Signal Processing
• Power Systems Engineering
• Robotics and Control
• Software Engineering

List of Labs

• The ARM Lab
• The WearME Lab
• The EK3 Innovation Lab
• Schweitzer Engineering Power System Protection Lab
• The GE Innovations Lab

Mechanical and Materials

The Mechanical and Materials Engineering Department provides students with a solid background in the fundamentals of mechanical engineering and also develops among them the ability to specialize in any of the fields that the discipline has to offer. The department offers both graduate and undergraduate degrees as well as combined and concurrent degree options. The combined degree program offers Mechanical Engineering degree with a Management, Medicine or Law degree.

The graduate degrees include

• Accelerated Masters of Engineering Science (Accel. MESc)
• Masters of Engineering Science (MESc)
• Doctor of Philosophy (PhD).

The Research MESc and PhD program are full-time thesis-based research degrees, which are approximately for two years and four years respectively. The department also offers a Graduate Professional Program, i.e., Professional MEng program which is a course-based degree that may be a combination of course work and project, or complete course-work.  This degree can be earned on either full or part-time basis and is usually a full-time one-year degree.

It also provides the Engineering in Medicine MEng program, which incorporates knowledge from:

• The Chemical and Biochemical Engineering (CBE)
• Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)
• Mechanical and Material Engineering (MME) departments.

This program offers an opportunity to trained engineering graduates to understand the role of modern medicine engineers better.

Areas of Research :

• Biomechanics
• Design and Manufacturing
• Automation Technologies and Systems
• Materials & Solid Mechanics
• Thermofluids
• Micro and NanoSystems

Computer Science

The University of Western Ontario's Department of Computer Science, founded in 1964, is recognized internationally for excellence in research and teaching. Several graduate and undergraduate degrees are available in the department. The department also offers several concurrent degree programs in addition to the traditional Honors Specialization, Majors and Minors in Computer Science, which one can be completed in a shorter duration.

Currently, the concurrent degrees that are offered are:

• HBA from Ivey combined with a Computer Science Degree
• JD from Western Law school combined with a Computer Science Degree
• BESc from Western Engineering combined with a Computer Science Degree
• Bachelor of Music from the Don Wright Faculty of Music with a Computer Science Degree
• Nursing Degree from Western with a Computer Science Degree

Computer Science Honors Specialization with a Minor in Game Design is another very popular program. Coming to graduate degrees, there are several options that can be chosen by a student resulting in an MSc which are Thesis, project and course-work.

The Department has also opened up the possibility of shared supervision between a computer science faculty member and another discipline for both the MSc and PhD degrees.

The Vector Institute Accredited Graduate Collaborative Specialization in Artificial Intelligence (CSAI) is offered by the Department of Computer Science in collaboration with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (CSAI).  This program seeks to improve a graduate student's education by adding a module to their study program that will provide Artificial Intelligence (AI) learning with a strong focus on the methodologies of artificial intelligence and applications in the core research areas. 

Areas of Research

• AI & Games
• Bioinformatics
• Computer Algebra
• Distributed Systems
• HCI & Software Engineering
• Theoretical Computer Science
• Vision and Image Processing

Pure Sciences

1. The Biology Department is a vibrant, multicultural educational organization committed to research and teaching excellence. It provides a core curriculum for all the "biological sciences" and exceptional biology and sub-disciplinary graduate and undergraduate programs. Like the discipline, the department is diverse, providing opportunities to study living systems right from the level of genes and proteins to entire ecosystems for both undergraduate and graduate students.

2. In Applied Mathematics, scientific computing and theoretical physics, Western offers honors, major and minor undergraduate programs. The Applied Mathematics Department also provides MSc and PhD degrees. Upon graduation, students work in a number of academic institutions, government agencies, and private firms.

3. Western Chemistry Department is committed to identifying, disseminating and applying chemical knowledge through research, teaching, and public service. The department offers several honors, majors and minors in Chemistry at the undergraduate level.

They include:

• Honors Specialization in Chemistry
• Honors Specialization in Biochemistry and Chemistry
• Honors Specialization in Chemical Biology
• Honors Specialization in Integrated Science with Chemistry
• Major in Chemistry
• Specialization in Chemistry
• Minor in Chemistry

The Department of Chemistry offers programs of study that lead to Master of Science (M.Sc) and the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) degrees at the graduate level. All programs are research-based.

4. The Mathematics Department offers undergraduate and graduate training in mathematics. It provides programs that lead to M.Sc.(1 year) degrees. And then there's Ph.D too. The Mathematics Department has set up research groups in various fields of contemporary mathematics, including algebra, geometry, topology, analysis and no commutative geometry. 

5. The Physics and Astronomy Department offers a degree in Concurrent Engineering / Physics which is a fully accredited engineering program under Western's Faculty of Engineering. The concurrent Engineering / Physics curriculum blends a normal degree in engineering with a major module in physics provided by the Physics and Astronomy Department. Degrees offered are  Concurrent Bachelor of Engineering Science (BESc) + Major in Physics.

Department students can link their degree with one of the following programs for collaboration:

• Environment & Sustainability
• Planetary Science; Scientific Computing
• Theoretical Physics (PhD only)

Students enrolled in a joint program are awarded a degree representing their training (i.e. PhD in Astronomy with Scientific Computing). The department also offers MSc Physics, MSc Astronomy and PhD graduate degrees. The master's degrees have both thesis and non-thesis options, whereas the PhD is a degree based on a dissertation.