Bachelor of Science in Product Design Engineering

at Brunel University London United Kingdom

Mathematics is a fundamental subject that is critical to our understanding of the world. Through the study of mathematics you’ll advance your problem solving skills, develop your reasoning and increase your analytical thinking. This is why mathematics forms a basis to so many careers. Yes – it is a discipline in its own right, but it is also the thinking behind countless commercial, industrial and technological activities. Mathematical models underpin engineering, the applied sciences, computing and many aspects of management today.

Follow the four-year ‘Professional Placement’ degree programme and you‘ll benefit from our extensive experience in helping students to find well-paid work placements with blue-chip companies. Our sandwich students find that their mathematical and transferable skills are in demand in many sectors, both in the UK and abroad.

Areas recently offering placements include: accountancy, aviation, banking, defence, finance, insurance, IT (software development, network management and design), management (public and private sector), marketing and telecommunications.

The Financial Mathematics BSc covers the application of mathematical methods to financial problems so if you’re looking to work in the fast-moving world of finance or commerce then this is the course for you. Two thirds of the course content focuses on developing your mathematical knowledge and skills. The rest of the course covers financial markets, corporate investment and finance.

This programme will meet the educational requirements of the Chartered Mathematician designation, awarded by the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, when it is followed by subsequent training and experience in employment to obtain equivalent competences to those specified by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) for taught master's degrees.

The Human Resource Management degree will provide you with a comprehensive understanding of current theory and practice relating to employment relations and Human Resource Management (HRM).

You will learn to combine theory and practice to perform effectively and responsibly as an HRM practitioner, understanding the purpose and key objectives of the HRM function in contemporary organisations. The course will further equip you to implement sustainable HRM strategies and practices that raise levels of employee recruitment, training, talent development, engagement, wellbeing and performance in a specific organisational context.

You will further learn of the complexities of employment regulation and the way it informs practice to ensure staff are treated ethically when they are at work, as well as how to promote equal opportunities and manage workplace diversity and inclusion. For a career in HRM you will also develop competencies in analysing key contemporary global labour market trends and their significance for workforce planning in both domestic and international organisational contexts

The Brunel Economics and Management BSc offers students interested in careers in management a detailed understanding of how economies and corporations function. 

You’ll examine how resources are allocated in response to consumer demand, business objectives and government policy, and how incentives are aligned between shareholders, managers and employees.

Specifically, your economics studies will give you a broad understanding of the production, distribution and capital formation activities within which organisations operate, while your management specialisation will focus on the coordination and use of materials and labour to achieve defined goals.

You’ll also study econometrics and develop sought-after skills in data modelling, and get training in analytical packages widely used by business and financial institutions such as SAS, EViews, Bloomberg, Reuters and STATA.

We offer two study options. You can choose three years full-time or four years full-time with a one-year professional placement between years two and three that will give you the chance to apply the theoretical principles you’ve learned to a working environment.

This degree is accredited the ACCA, which means you’ll gain exemptions from certain professional qualifying exams should you decide to study further to become a chartered accountant.

In a world of integrating global markets, the expertise you’ll get from your Brunel degree in how corporate entities are organised and managed will make you a preferred job candidate to employers in business, finance and government.

As the amount of digital information increases, major institutions in sectors such as finance and medicine rely on robust structures that can grow and adapt. By specialising in software engineering, you’ll focus on how to build high quality systems which will be easier to maintain and develop as the requirements of the system change and available technologies evolve. The techniques involved include testing, service-oriented architectures, and refactoring.

On the Computer Science (Software Engineering) BSc degree course, you’ll also learn how to build different types of software, from web-based systems to mobile solutions. In the final year you’ll take compulsory modules in advanced computer science and choose optional modules that interest you in a variety of compelling areas.

In addition, you’ll acquire in-depth knowledge of algorithms, design, programming and testing techniques. By the end of the course, you’ll have confidence in your knowledge of common system and network architectures and system development approaches, requirements capture, design methods, models, tools, and techniques.

You’ll become well-versed in implementing and testing systems and software maintenance. Key to this course is cultivating a reflective approach to project management issues arising from team-based software development.

This specialist degree course allows you to display an in-depth knowledge of the management, organisation and execution of large-scale software design and development activities including reuse and integration. All our degrees emphasise acquiring knowledge and skills to develop your new understanding creatively and professionally. Although this is an academic degree, the course balances theory with real-world practice in information and computer management.

Our course is designed for flexibility, so if you’re not sure which route you want to go, you can select modules and specialise gradually during your time with us. You can transfer between Computer Science and Business Computing up to the start of Level 2, then, should you wish, to choose a specialism up to the start of Level 3.

We know that when you graduate, you’ll be working on large projects. That’s why one third of each year of our programmes is project-based. On Levels 1 and 2, you’ll build a software solution in a team, and in your final year you’ll carry out an individual project. You’ll also have the opportunity to showcase your projects at the annual  Made in Brunel (Software Innovation) event, with awards presented by the likes of Cisco, Sky and Xerox.

As part of your degree course, you’ll have the chance to take a year-long work placement between your second year and third year. We’ll support you in finding that all-important paid professional experience, in the UK or abroad. The feedback we’ve received is that those who have taken a placement are much more likely to find a job for which their degree was a formal requirement as it gives you a competitive advantage. Recent graduates have gone on to work for well-known names such as Accenture, Toshiba, Microsoft, British Airways, O2, and Barclays.

Our programmes are accredited by the British Computer Society, the Chartered Institute for IT, for the purposes of fully meeting the academic requirement for registration as a Chartered IT Professional (CITP), and on behalf of the Engineering Council, for the purposes of fully meeting the academic requirement for Incorporated Engineer (IEng) and partially meeting the academic requirement for a Chartered Engineer (CEng). 

The accreditation also allows you to apply for professional membership of the BCS after you have successfully completed your degree.

The department has been awarded an Athena SWAN Bronze, recognising our dedication to the advancement of gender equality in STEM subjects. We now have an ongoing three-year action plan to further implement strategies and improve our practices. As part of this endeavour, Brunel’s  Women in Engineering and Computing mentoring scheme provides our female students with invaluable help and support from the industry.

Often credited as the ‘father of immunology’ Edward Jenner is said to have saved more lives than any other human being through his discovery of the smallpox vaccine. Modern study of immunology is an exciting and fast moving area of biomedicine and remains an extremely rewarding one to be part of.

At Brunel, we understand that your specialist knowledge should be built on a sound grounding of all the areas of biomedical sciences. This means that your first year will cover areas such as the human body, biochemistry and research skills. As you continue through your degree, you'll study specialist areas that will give you a greater understanding of the role of the immune system. You’ll learn about how the human defence system helps to prevent disease and you’ll focus on how this can fail through deficiencies in immunity.

And if you change your mind about your specialist area, don’t worry. The flexibility of our course at Brunel means that you can switch to another specialist pathway in the second year or even take the general Biomedical Sciences BSc.

The Royal Society of Biology has awarded its accreditation to all of Brunel’s undergraduate Biomedical Sciences courses. This means you can be confident that your degree will prepare you for the working world – and your prospective employers will know this too. You'll receive a one year’s membership as an Associate Member once you graduate, integrating you into the sector with access to key contacts and up-to-date knowledge.

In your final year, you’ll have the opportunity to contribute to our research programmes in cellular and biochemical pathways, the regulation of gene expression, DNA repair and immunological responses to microbial infection. This will give you first-hand experience of real-world laboratory research and prepare you for your future career.

This course has a placement option. Find out more about work placements available.

Graduate with the confidence and experience you need to make a great start in your career by choosing to do a biomedical sciences placement.

• A placement lets you gain valuable experience that will put you ahead of the rest when you’re looking for employment. Like some of our former students, you can potentially spend a year working at some top companies such as Mars, Parexel and Astra Zeneca.
• If you’re looking for the experience of working further afield in biomedical sciences, there are also opportunities to work abroad where you can flourish in an exciting new culture. Recent opportunities our students have benefited from have included laboratory work in Sicily, a cytogenetics company close to Milan or working for Bayer in Berlin.
• The opportunities are endless and the experience you’ll get will be enlightening as well as rewarding.

If you follow the news and keep up-to-date on what’s happening in the world, you will know that the challenge of keeping people and nations secure is a focus and a priority across the globe. What does the future hold for keeping us safe, and how are solutions concluded?

Everyone wants to feel secure. Whether it is the security of our borders, our food and water supplies, our data or our homes, securing the safety of our resources and ourselves has never posed as big a challenge as it does today.

Alongside the core spine of your Global Challenges degree, you will take an in-depth look at issues such as climate change, sustainable development, migration, terrorism, inequality and poverty and how they affect the world we live in, this pathway will give you a greater understanding of security issues, whether they’re on the ground, in space or in cyberspace.

Your studies are structured into three levels which reflect the depth and breadth of the subject: integrated, applied and advanced security. The integrated security modules in your first year will introduce you to four themes including security, intelligence, reasoning and influence. In your second year you move on to look at applied security issues to help integrate your knowledge into new topics of war and crime, space and risk. Then, in your final year, you go on to look at more advanced security themes like threats and government.

As part of your course, you will also investigate some of the measures adopted in crisis management including the security implications of militarisation. This interesting course will take you on a journey through variety of subjects including military studies, criminology, sociology, politics and war.

Throughout your course you will build your ability to work in a team as you build skills in project management, presenting and team pitches. A third year Enterprise Project will help to bring all these skills together as you work on a group project with a real organisation.

You have the option to apply for an internship at the end of your first year and can take a one-year placement between years two and three, giving you valuable work experience and a step ahead for your career when you graduate.

Our Digital Design and Branding MSc degree is a modern, hands-on course that combines digital technology and creative design. It has been designed to equip you with advanced knowledge and practical skills required for a creative role in the digital branding industry.

You’ll develop deep understanding of advanced digital design practices within the context of branding.

Our modern, industry standard digital media facilities include a green screen and post-production studio, motion capture, sound and photography studios, 4K digital cinema cameras, and a dedicated render farm. You'll have independent access to exclusive PC and Mac computing workshops and benefit from the latest industry standard specialist software for graphic design and image/video editing, 3D animation, digital compositing and rich interactive content creation. There's also the opportunity for you to use our immersive virtual environment laboratory. This includes an immersive dome (planetarium) set up for Brunel by the National Space Centre in Leicester, and is one of only a few in the UK!

There are guest lectures covering lots of different digital media topics and the visiting lecturers provide advice on how to structure your portfolio and showreels. Speakers include creative and design directors, user experience designers, 3D graphic supervisors, as well as mobile and web developers.

Visits are arranged to TV and photography studios, and post-production houses. There’s also the opportunity to go to conferences and this is your chance to build networks with key industry experts. In addition, you have the advantage of Brunel’s close location to London for trips to exhibitions celebrating the creative industries.

Our digital design and branding MSc can be studied full-time over one year or part-time over two years.

A calendar highlight is the BrunelDigital degree show hosted on Brunel’s one London campus. Exhibiting your creative work at this event is a great way for you to connect with leading creative technologists and showcase your talent.

This course will help you to develop your creative writing skills and focus on how they relate to games design and game play. You’ll learn about the application of traditional story and narrative design and how it applies to games design and gameplay.

Your learning will come through lectures, workshops, seminars, play sessions and tutorials. You’ll also use the online forum to discuss, share and develop your knowledge. You’ll gain confidence in sharing your ideas, giving and receiving feedback and working individually as well as in a multi-disciplinary team.

The teaching team are experts in nurturing games talent and you will benefit from their insight into the industry. You will be introduced to ideas at the forefront of the discipline as well as sharing their knowledge and understanding of professional practice. This will help to keep you up-to-date with industry developments and show you how the skills you learn on this course are applicable to the world of work.

Of course the best teachers of writing are writers and Creative Writing at Brunel is taught by successful, published writers, many of whom have international reputations. You will draw on their experience across a range of genres and you will have the opportunity to study Creative Writing to a high level.  You will develop your knowledge, understanding, and analytical and creative skills through the analysis, interpretation and creation of literary texts.

All games students will have 24-hour access to the games lab, where high spec PCs are available for you to work on and play games. You will also use the Design room, where an impressive collection of board games is available for you to learn and understand the principles of games design. This room also serves as a wonderful, collaborative space where you can play and generate ideas, work, relax and have fun.

You’ll finish this course with a skillset that will allow you to develop a game from scratch and be ready to work and thrive in the games industry.

Have you grown up with a deep interest in film and television and the thinking that goes into bringing entertainment to homes across the country? Take a step into this fast-paced and exciting industry by studying Brunel’s Film and Television Studies and English BA.

Your degree will give you a thorough understanding of film and television by examining a wide range of recent and contemporary productions for both the big and small screen. You will gain an insight into a range of genres as your studies will explore Hong Kong to Hollywood cinema, science fiction, documentaries, and everything in between.

By opting for this joint honours degree with English, you will also study the major areas of English literature from the Renaissance to the most recent publications in poetry, fiction and drama, whilst developing an informed understanding of current debates in the subject.

This is an exciting, dynamic, wide-ranging course with plenty of flexibility allowing you to follow your own individual tastes and literary passions.

The film and television industries are very hands-on and wide-ranging fields, therefore you will be able to make modules choice accordingly. After the first year, up to 40% of your module choices can be practical so you are able to take the theory you have learned and put it into practice by applying it to your own work.

As well as enhancing your learning by attending screenings at the British Film Institute, the Institute of Contemporary Arts and other cinemas across the capital, you will also be eligible to enter our annual Brunel University Film Festival (BUFF) with categories including Best Fiction, Best Non-Fiction and Best Overall Film. This will allow you to put all your practical and theory skills into practice and will give you the opportunity to showcase your talents.

Brunel offers students access to fantastic editing suites with up-to-date production software including Avid with accredited training facilities for Final Cut Pro 10, allowing you to bring your ideas, thoughts and inspirations to life.

As you’ll be taught and supported by academics who are experts in their field, you’ll develop skills that can be applied from the classroom to the workplace. They know the industry inside out, so you know you are learning from experienced professionals who will bring their unique insights into your learning.

Gain an insight into life after your studies by putting your learning into practice by opting for a one-year work placement. You will graduate with valuable work experience to enhance your employment prospects and will be able to develop an understanding the working world within the film industry. We have excellent links with a wide range of notable external organisations, so you will have the opportunity to apply for high quality placements across London.

The Film and Television Studies and English BA is a part of the BAFTA albert education partnership. This accreditation provides students with exclusive access to the industry’s BAFTA albert carbon calculator, a tool used by Netflix, BBC, ITV, Channel 4, UKTV and Sky when producing their content. Participating students will work towards creating environmentally-friendly, sustainable content. Upon completion you will be presented with industry-recognised certification and become an official “BAFTA albert graduate”. This opportunity is provided at no extra cost.

As a graduate of this dynamic degree, you will leave us with the confidence to be able to develop a creative idea and see it through to the end – a transferable skill valuable in any sector.

The world relies on computers and so do most businesses and organisations. Mathematics is the language of computer science so if you have the skills for both you’ll find a whole range of careers available to you in most sectors.

On this single honours course you’ll develop your mathematical and statistical knowledge and apply these skills to solve problems in computing, business and other areas.

Approximately two-thirds of the course is devoted to mathematical and statistical areas. The mathematics subjects on this course focus particularly on aspects of modern algebra that relate to computer science and also include a considerable amount of numerical analysis of mathematical problems. You have the opportunity to specialise in Level 3 so as an example, you may choose modern encryption methods as used in internet transactions.

Follow the four-year Professional Placement degree programme and you‘ll benefit from our extensive experience in helping students to find well-paid work placements with blue-chip companies. Our sandwich students find that their mathematical, computer science and transferable skills are in demand in many sectors, both in the UK and abroad.

Areas recently offering placements include: accountancy, aviation, banking, defence, finance, insurance, IT (software development, network management and design), management (public and private sector), marketing and telecommunications.

This programme will meet the educational requirements of the Chartered Mathematician designation, awarded by the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, when it is followed by subsequent training and experience in employment to obtain equivalent competences to those specified by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) for taught master's degrees.