Key Features
Core curriculum followed by three different specializations
In-person and synchronous hybrid options
Friday and Saturday class schedule, alternating weekends plus one four-day workshop each quarter
42 units in 12 or 24 month programs
Tuition is $865 per unit
About
The Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in partnership with the Rady School of Management and Engineering Executive Education offers the master of advanced studies (MAS) degree in convergent systems engineering (CoSE). The MAS in CoSE program brings together systems thinking and social sciences; modeling, AI and machine learning, and analysis; systems and software engineering; and business principles to enable leaders to identify systemic problems and opportunities, and transform these into sustainable solutions.
The MAS in Convergent Systems Engineering program includes specializations in:
- Architecture-Based Enterprise Systems Engineering (AESE) - 1 Year Program
- Cyber-Physical Social Systems (CPSS) - 2 Year Program
- Value Supply Chains (VSC) - 2 Year Program
Each specialization will teach students how to think differently; how to ask the right questions; see the big picture as it evolves; and embrace ambiguity as they make decisions in uncertain environments. Students will learn how to create closed-loop, evolving architectures of AI-intensive systems in their specialization area. Students will create cognitive and digital models to visualize, intuit, and innovate these complex systems, and will learn how to orchestrate and rapidly integrate new, complex capabilities. They will practice iterative and agile engineering design, and explore methods for evaluating systems for efficiency, performance, scalability, and reliability as well as ethical social, environmental, and economic sustainability. Alongside these technical capabilities, students in the program will practice business, leadership, ethics, and teaming skills in coursework and as they work together in teams on a capstone project.
Classes
All three specializations will begin with the same core curriculum consisting of five courses plus the capstone project:
- Leadership Skills, Values, and Team Building
Through lecture and online delivery, introduces principles of effective teamwork and leadership and of strategic managerial communication. Provides an introduction to case study and to ethical issues confronting managers in technology or science-driven firms. Develops managerial communication skills. - Modeling, Simulation and Analysis
Model-driven architecture and development concepts, business process and workflow modeling, structured analysis and IDEF modeling methods, object-, component- and service-orientation and the Unified Modeling Language, event- and stream models, colored Petri Nets, executable architectures, distributed simulation for performance analysis. - Decision and Risk Analysis
Focuses on analytical techniques supporting rational business decision-making, providing systematic approaches to complex decision situations. Addresses analysis of conflicting objectives and use of tools such as value trees, decision trees, influence diagrams, and value hierarchies, Bayesian networks, and data mining. - Sustainable Innovation
This course combines the contextual analysis of systems thinking to ensure social, environmental and economic sustainability, with entre/intrapreneurial approaches to innovation to provide the foundations for the conceptualization and engineering of ethically sustainable complex systems. - Management of Complex Systems
Addresses critical processes and frameworks required to build effective business relationships internally and externally. Focuses on the skills required by functional or technical leaders to envision strategic value and create business development strategies aligned with organizational needs. - Capstone
Students will work collaboratively on a team project, mostly in a lab setting, to demonstrate their grasp of the material in the entire project sequence.
The specialization courses are listed below.
Sample AESEfrom previous years are available to review.
Cost
The Masters of Advanced Study degree programs at Jacobs School of Engineering are entirely self-supporting and receive no state funding. The cost of the master's program is all inclusive - it includes all instruction costs, administrative costs, textbooks, course materials, and on-campus parking and meals on all class days.
The tuition cost for all three specializations is the same, $865 per unit (42 units) for the groups starting in Fall 2024. The AESE program is delivered as a 12 month format and the CPSS and VSC are delivered in a 24 month format.
The per unit tuition does not include mandatory student fees assessed annually by UCSD. It also assumes students wave UCSD student health insurance. Additional information about tuition and fees is available on the.
Military-affiliated students can.
Students needingcan view this.
In addition, many employers have benefits programs that help pay for additional education. Contact your HR department to see if your company offers these benefits.
Specializations
Architecture-Based Enterprise Systems Engineering (AESE)
The AESE specialization is intended to educate mid-career and senior engineers, and engineering managers to the problems and emerging solution approaches that can enable their enterprises to better respond to the challenges of globally distributed operations in complex, highly dynamic, event-driven environments. An “integrated perspective” that merges the views of management and engineering communities is increasingly recognized as one of the cornerstones of a successful approach to enterprise complexity and is a key aspect of the AESE specialization.
The additional AESE course include:
- Complexity and Large Scale Systems
Comprehensive introduction to system and event complexity, software and systems engineering practices for complexity management, agile and plan-driven development, development and management processes and process models, data-, information- and knowledge-management, basics of distributed data and computation. - Enterprise Architecting
Architectural foundations, frameworks, standards, and infrastructures with an emphasis on layered architectures, loose coupling, architecture evolution, service- and component-oriented architectures, enterprise service buses, metadata and information virtualization, ontologies, Semantic Web, policy and governance, service-level agreements, information assurance essentials. - Engineering Essentials for Open Distributed Systems
Engineering tools and their use in defining the layered and service-oriented architectures, Unified Modeling Language and enterprise architecture tools, business and process modeling tools, visualization methods, data and information management tools, comprehensive domain modeling, architecture implementation via enterprise service buses. - Patterns for Enterprise Architecting
Fundamental aspects of pattern methodologies and re-use, requirements, design and architecture patterns, patterns for service-oriented architectures, enterprise application and integration patterns, E-business patterns, event-driven architectures and patterns for complex event processing, process patterns, architecture evolution and refactoring using patterns.
This program is considered full-time as enrollment each quarter is 12 units or more, with the exception of the Capstone course in the summer quarter.
Cyber-Physical Social Systems (CPSS)
The CPSS specialization is focused on the engineering of Cyber-physical-social systems that integrate computing, physical assets, and human networks over the lifecycle from concept to deployment and evolution. While most think about people using systems, many complex systems (such as the smart grid, or smart cities) are actually a combination of computers, machines and people all working together to achieve individual, organizational, and social goals. This specialization places the human and their social interactions within the system of interest.
The additional CPSS courses include:
- Cyber-Physical Social Systems: Conception
This course is focused on the transformation of opportunity into concept including: understanding customers and markets, the product development life-cycle, and the challenges of organizing, managing, and growing a successful endeavor. Students learn to transform the definition of a problem in a technical social context to system concept, use-case scenarios and technical requirements which is described using a model-based approach. - Cyber-Physical Social Systems: Architecture
In this course students you will study the ways architectures are developed and represented. Well-known architectural patterns (such as layered and n-tiered) will be discussed and analyzed using case study methods. Student will learn, and delve into their strengths and weaknesses. We’ll examine case studies that illustrate excellent, and not-so-excellent examples. We will describe best-practices in evaluating architectures, and measuring their suitability to task, and developing ways to improve on existing architectures. - Cyber-Physical Social Systems: Implementation
This course explores methods for evaluating systems for correctness, efficiency, performance, scalability, and reliability. Students gain an understanding of product acceptance testing through an established, customer requirements oriented verification process. Skills covered include inspection, unit-level testing, and integrated system-level analysis. The role of automation is examined. Emphasis is on problem-solving skills, especially in analyzing software components. - Cyber-Physical Social Systems: Evolution
This course focuses on managing the evolution of a system after its initial release to the market through retirement on three levels. The foundation is to craft policies, processes and infrastructure to support, maintain and respond to quality issues. Second, to drive the evolution of system capabilities and characteristics based on evolving needs and enabling technologies. Third, to proactively “disrupt” the market by reframing the opportunity and reinventing the system.
This program is considered part-time as enrollment each quarter is 8 units or less.
Value Supply Chains (VSC)
The VSC specialization is concerned with supply chains which are the connective tissue of the global economy that is the source of much of the innovation that enables economic stability and growth. Ultimately, supply chains determine the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of engineered systems. There has been growing industrial demand for engineers who can understand, design and manage complex end-to-end supply chains. Systems engineering skills combined with the supply chain and business mindset, which is the focus of this specialization, matches well with this growing industry demand.
The additional VSC courses include:
- Value Supply Chain: Conception
Covers end-to-end supply chain fundamental foundation and principles, including value chain creation and strategy (top-line growth in demand) and supply chain integration (bottom-line control in supply), overview on supply chain systems from raw materials to customers, planning/forecasting, procurement, logistics, manufacturing, inventory, and global nature of supply chains. - Value Supply Chain: Architecture
Supply chain economics and finance, development of cost management and strategy such as Should Cost Modeling and AIM & DRIVE, financial models and legal systems, price and cost analysis including total cost of ownership (life cycle) and value engineering (optimization), law of demand and supply, and bottom-line impact and risk assessment. - Value Supply Chain: Implementation
Framework to the use of data and analytics in decision-making of various processes including sourcing and procurement, developing category profit and sourcing strategy, to improve the performance of various operations. Enhance understanding of business models and partnership engagement, ESG commitment and opportunity. - Value Supply Chain: Evolution
This course introduces the latest industry practices related to the value supply chain management. It includes new technological advances, such as blockchains, Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence and digitization of supply chains. This course engages students with leading supply chain industry experts and enhances their understanding on economically evaluating the latest technological evolutions in the supply chain industry and new potential business models.
This program is considered part-time as enrollment each quarter is 8 units or less.