Programme structure

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Bring academic theory to life.  

Studying for an MEng at the Dyson Institute gives you the unique opportunity to study for your degree at the centre of a global leader in design innovation. You’ll learn engineering fundamentals from leading academics and put them into practice developing future Dyson products.

Twenty-first century engineering demands multidisciplinary experts. In your first two years you'll study a general engineering syllabus. Designed to be academically rigorous, and covering engineering fundamentals, theory is paired with real life learning as you rotate through many of Dyson's global engineering teams. You'll gain a strong academic and technical foundation across:

  • software engineering
  • mechanical engineering
  • electrical and electronics engineering
  • electromechanical engineering

Building on these broad skillsets, in years three and four you'll choose to specialise in one of these areas. Whilst this can be challenging, we support you to find the specialism that best aligns with your skills and interests. With your unique skillset you'll have opportunities to develop your expertise and become an invaluable part of your team.

I believe opting for a degree programme with a work-based element has had the biggest impact on where I am in my career today. Without the workplace rotations in the first two years of the course, I wouldn’t have been aware of acoustics as an engineering discipline.

Sophie - Acoustics & Vibrations Engineer
Dyson Institute Graduate 2021

Programme structure

You'll learn and work on Dyson's Malmesbury campus, where you can make the most of our state-of-the-art facilities and enjoy in-person support from Dyson Institute academics and Dyson engineers. Working and collaborating with others, you'll help to solve problems that others ignore. 

There are two academic semesters per year:   

  • Semester one: September - February 
  • Semester two: February - July 

During term time, two days a week are devoted to lectures, revision, academic projects and self-study.

When you join, you will spend the remaining three days per week in an extended workplace induction, focused on technical training and development through problem-based learning, based on a real Dyson project. This will equip you with the skills and confidence to make a real impact when joining your first workplace rotation in January. 

You'll have four workplace rotations across your first two years on programme, giving you an insight into mechanical, electronics and software engineering and New Product Innovation. In your third and fourth year, you'll have the opportunity to specialise in one of these areas, or combine through the electromechanical stream.

What happens in summer? 

You will continue to spend three days per week in the workplace. On your two 'academic' days, you will continue your personal and professional development as outlined below: 

  • Year 1: you'll complete a Summer Series project which is designed to develop your understanding of end-to-end product development that goes beyond your workplace experiences. 
  • Year 2: you'll complete a manufacturing rotation to understand another side of the product development cycle; where possible this will include an opportunity to spend time in Dyson's inspiring research and development facilities in South East Asia. 
  • Years 3 and 4: you'll spend the time working in your final engineering team. 

The programme is taught across a variety of delivery methods to accommodate all styles of learning. These include lectures, tutorials, demonstrations, workshops, project supervision, group work and work-based learning.

The programme is assessed by approximately 40% examination and 60% assessed coursework. Both academic and workplace modules will contribute towards your degree qualification. Each year will be weighted accordingly to contribute to your final grade:

  • Year 1 - 0%
  • Year 2 - 20%
  • Year 3 - 40%
  • Year 4 - 40%

You'll receive a generous holiday entitlement of at least 40 days, plus eight bank holidays. This is a mixture of approximately ten days 'annual leave' which you can book any time (excluding study days), and 31 days 'academic leave', distributed at key points in the programme:

  • Two weeks over Christmas (including two bank holidays)
  • One week in February
  • Two weeks around April/May depending on Easter and the academic calendar (usually including two bank holidays)
  • Two weeks in summer

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Summer Series

During the summer of year one you’ll take part in Summer Series – a programme designed to develop your understanding of end-to-end product development and collaborative working, that goes beyond your workplace experiences. Summer Series is an assessed module contributing to your degree qualification. 

Case studies: inventions to save the world

Hive Feed - a smart, connected beehive

Hive Feed - a smart, connected beehive

Pollination is a fundamental process for the survival of our ecosystems, contributing to food security and biodiversity. Almost 90 per cent of the world’s flowering plant species, 75 per cent of our planet’s food crops and 35 per cent of agricultural land depend on animal pollination, with bees being one of the primary species of this important group. But pollinators are increasingly under threat from human activities.

“We were driven to design a smart solution centred around bee hives after reading research from world leading naturalists that suggests that if our bee populations die out, humans would have just four years left to live,” explains Freya Moore, leader of the project. What’s more, the survival of bees relates to multiple UN SDGs, including protecting Life on Land and promoting Zero Hunger.

Being members of the Dyson Institute Bee Keeping Club, the project team identified some key problems they could solve. Keeping hive conditions favourable to the colony can be difficult as opening the hive up to inspect it disturbs bees. As such, parasites and unstable heat and humidity conditions can be hard to detect and lead to the decline of the hive.

The group’s invention, Hive Feed, is a modular system that fits into any national standard-sized hive. Thanks to a sophisticated electronics system, comprising of temperature and humidity sensors, internal infrared cameras, microphones, an Arduino Feather and a Raspberry Pi, the smart sensing technology can permanently detect and measure the temperature, humidity and vibrations within the hive. These measurements are fed into a dashboard that shows the user the live conditions in the hive and alerts them when action needs to be taken. 

Smart Posture-Correcting Chair

Smart Posture-Correcting Chair

While posture-correction may not seem like an obvious solution to the UN SDGs, after a year of working from home in a pandemic, bad posture has become an epidemic. One in three people state that back pain impacts their everyday life and its estimated that 186.7m working days a year are lost due to back pain. This goes against the UNs commitment to support Good Health and Wellbeing as well as Decent Work and Economic Growth.

The Smart Posture-Correcting Chair project lead by Undergraduate Engineer Shrey Shah aims to develop a smart chair that gives the user feedback on their seated position and send communications via an app when their posture starts to slip.

The chair works through a system of 10 pressure sensors integrated in the back and seat of the chair. It monitors the way the individual is sitting 100 times per second and provides real time feedback to an app on the user's phone, converting the 10 sensor outputs into one easy to read 'posture score'. With all the electronics integrated in the chair it's designed to be compact, and not impact the comfort of the chair.

Water-Saving Toilet Hand Wash Basin Conversion Kit

Water-Saving Toilet Hand Wash Basin Conversion Kit

Access to clean water and sanitation is not only a recognised human right, but it is also part of the UN’s SDGs. Despite this, the World Health Organisation and UNICEF estimate that more than 884 million people do not have safe water to drink and almost two billion people do not have access to basic sanitation – that’s more than 25 per cent of the world’s population. Compounding this issue, its estimated that the average person in the UK produces 150 litres of waste water every day.

“We were struck by the fact that so many of us take water for granted, despite it being so hard to come by for others” says Kuba Rogozinski, leader of the project. “About 30 per cent of total water used in a home is used to flush the toiletᶦᵛ, and in the UK this water is the same high-quality water that’s in our taps. We wanted to design something that would recirculate water effectively and reduce waste.”

To solve this problem, Kuba Rogozinski and his team developed a Water Saving Toilet Sink Conversion Kit, aimed at reducing the water consumption of typical households and providing an alternative solution to bathroom design. To do this, they removed the ceramic top of the toilet cistern and installed a ‘toilet tap’ through a universal mounting system designed to fit on top of any regular toilet.

A sink basin is mounted on top of this system to function as a regular hand washing station, but with added intelligent features. It tracks how much water is being used via an LCD display, which is motion activated through the use of proximity sensors to minimise contact and maintain hygiene. The water that would usually only refill the toilet ready to flush again is instead used to clean your hands before it’s used to flush. Together, this technology promotes water saving, cleanliness and sustainable living in compact spaces.

Intelligent Composting

Intelligent Composting

Supporting cities to be sustainable and promoting responsible consumption and production of goods are two of the UN’s SDGs. Looking at ways in which to support this, Undergraduate Engineer Xander Goode and his team explored what a smart composting system could look like, making home composting easier, reducing food waste in cities and paving the way for new renewable energy sources.

After carefully considering the problems that needed to be addressed in current home composting, the team landed on a design could hold 27 litres of compost. The prototype includes an air-tight lid mechanism, an activated carbon odour filter and user interface to make the composting process more ergonomic, as well as liquid-solid separation system to create different types of compost of different usage. 

Key to the design is the sensor and UI technology, which measures and reports methane, ammonia, temperature and humidity levels. This, in turn, notifies the user and prompts behaviour change – such as adjusting the temperature – to optimise the composting conditions within the bin. The compost generated can in turn be used to improve soil quality for house plants or urban allotments.

“Composting is often regarded as this messy process that’s only possible if you have a big garden and time to spare,” says Xander. “We hope this invention could make composting far more feasible for city dwellers, derive more potential from our existing waste streams and support healthier urban growing of fruit and vegetables”. 

Condensed Farming System

Condensed Farming System

The UN estimates that 2.37 billion people are without access to food or unable to eat a healthy, balanced diet on a regular basis. Post-pandemic, this number is expected to have increased.

“Growing food is difficult at the best of times, but often people in need don’t have ground to farm, or the ambient conditions and weather aren’t favourable to food growth,” says Undergraduate Engineer Ben Howick, leader of the Condensed Farming System project. “That’s why we wanted to explore a low-cost, low-maintenance condensed farming system that could be easily transported and potentially work off-grid. Not only could this help support people who don’t have access to food, but also provide a sustainable solution to disaster relief support when the existing food supply is disrupted.”

The design is based on a hydroponic system – whereby plants are grown in a water-based nutrient-rich solution rather than soil – housed in an insulated, drainpipe-like module fitted with sensors. This enables the temperature, humidity and light source to be monitored and regulated, giving the crops inside the module what they need regardless of the conditions outside. The isolated and sectional design also means that the system can be manufactured easily and laid out in a shipping container or similar structure, maximising the yield of crops possible. 

“Not only are these projects globally relevant,” explains Ben Edmonds, Principal Engineer at Dyson, and a member of the Summer Series’  judging panel, “but they are also highly creative solutions. Combining hardware and software, it is amazing to see that many of these inventions can provide real-time information that catalyse behaviour change and improve people’s lives – while looking out for the planet. It was a pleasure to judge this year’s Summer Series, and I look forward to seeing the potential of these inventions realised outside of the lab one day soon.”

The Summer Series projects provide the perfect opportunity for first-year students to design, build and test creative solutions. It provides the students with the space to develop their professional skills on a project that they own and manage, putting into practice the theory and tools that they learn in the accompanying workshops. This hands-on approach is at the core of the Dyson Institute’s approach to learning and development and allows them to apply these skills in the other areas of the programme such as in the workplace.

Bob
Deputy Director - Engineering Integration
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