4CBLW00 - Multidisciplinary CBL
One of the mandatory courses for all second-year Bachelor students in Q4 is Multidisciplinary CBL (4CBLW00). In this course, you will work in multidisciplinary teams, composed of students from different majors, collaborating across disciplinary boundaries.
The course offers 24 projects on various topics, organized and coordinated by teaching teams from multiple departments. Each project addresses an open challenge in Engineering Design or in Scientific Inquiry.
After enrolling in the course, you will have the opportunity to submit a list of your preferred projects. Details about enrollment and project preferences are provided below.
General objectives
Personal & professional development:
- understand, evaluate, and execute an open design process or an open scientific inquiry,
- acquire, apply, and integrate (new) disciplinary knowledge and skills (self-directed, student-controlled),
- collaborate effectively in a multidisciplinary team,
- provide and receive constructive feedback through peer- and self-assessment,
- act responsibly in every stage of the project, considering societal and environmental impact
Disciplinary knowledge and skills:
- understand and apply project-specific disciplinary knowledge and skills.
Project 9: Mechanical tester design for material characterization
The function of materials depends strongly on their mechanical properties, making mechanical characterization essential when developing or replacing them. Examples range from hip replacements to aircraft wings and building constructions.
In this CBL project, students are challenged to identify a synthetic material that can functionally replace a biological tissue by mimicking its mechanical properties. To address this challenge, students from different disciplines will design, build, calibrate, and operate their own mechanical tester, integrating components such as a load cell, moving crosshead, and electronic control systems.
They will use this tester to mechanically characterize both synthetic materials and biological tissues, with the aim of finding a synthetic material that can functionally replace biological tissue by mimicking its mechanical properties. By combining experimental and numerical approaches, students will acquire, apply, and integrate knowledge in materials characterization and design across fields such as biomedical engineering, mechanics, and materials science.
This course offers hands-on experience at the intersection of engineering and healthcare innovation, preparing students to contribute to the development of sustainable and functional biomaterials for tissue repair.
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Project 24: Engineering art
How do we engineer art? How much science is involved in art? Science, engineering and art connect and intersect in multiple, yet subtle ways. Often art inspires scientists and engineers. In 1878, Van鈥檛 Hoff in his essay titled 鈥淚magination in Science鈥� listed artistic pursuits of every major scientist before his time. Poets and painters often capture natural phenomena with scientific precision and artistic charm. Oliver Andrews, in his book 鈥淟iving Materials: A Sculptor鈥檚 Handbook鈥�, exemplifies the importance of materials and of their processing in sculpting, stating that 鈥渨hether quarried, mined harvested, or manufactured, all materials are expressions of the forces of nature. The artist encounters these forces in his work, as do architects, road builders, and scientists鈥�. We increasingly affirm that creativity and aesthetics are an integral to good science, yet as educators we consistently struggle to facilitate the nurturing of such talents by the students.
This year, our CBL course explores these connections under the theme 鈥�Living Materials for Living Art鈥�. We will explore artistic creation through the lens of chemistry, material science, fluid dynamics, biology, mechanics, and engineering. Students will be encouraged to consider how materials behave, age, respond, and even interact with their environment, and how these behaviors can be used intentionally as part of an artistic vision.
Thus, in the 鈥淓ngineering Art鈥� CBL project, students of different disciplines and backgrounds will work together to design, engineer and produce a living or materially expressive art object (e.g. painting, sculpture, short film). The project will involve the following steps:
- Develop a design idea of an 鈥渁rt object鈥�,
- Use experiment, theory, and/or programming to engineer an 鈥渁rt object鈥�.
- Evaluate how material properties, transformations, and environmental interactions contribute to artistic meaning and form.
Example challenges include: 鈥淩ecreating Van Gogh鈥搇ike impasto using environmentally friendly, water-based pigment formulations鈥�, 鈥淩estoring or reimagining foam-based sculptures inspired by Piero Gilardi and other artists working with polymeric materials鈥�, 鈥淯sing bubbles, wet foams, or transient fluid interfaces to produce dynamic, ephemeral, or evolving artworks鈥� or 鈥淒esigning art using materials that change color, texture, or form over time鈥�.