Computer Engineering Degree

What is Computer Engineering?

A computer engineer is likely involved when hardware and software need to interact. Software dominates the world around us, but it takes hardware devices to complete the interaction. Consider IoT (internet of things) devices like the smartwatch you are wearing or the robotic vacuum cleaner quietly running in the background. Understanding computer engineering means knowing how to build a computing device and writing the software to drive it.

What does a computer engineer do?

Through the computer engineering degree at South Dakota Mines, students become proficient at writing software and firmware for embedded microcontrollers, designing microprocessors, interfacing with sensors, and building real-time operating systems. Computer engineer students at Mines understand software and hardware products' design, build, and test methodologies. The hands-on and immersive experience is at the heart of the computer engineering degree at Mines.

Students studying computer engineering at Mines gain exposure to topics from designing innovative computer hardware to a deep understanding of robotics and intelligent systems. Students can discover new types of artificial intelligence.

Courses for this Degree

• Test-Driven Software Development
• Introduction to Digital Systems
• Programming Techniques
• Finite Structures
• Foundations of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
• Data Structures & Algorithms
• Circuits
• Differential Equations
• CPU & GPU Organization and Architecture
• Embedded Intelligent Systems

Course Curriculum

Catalog Links: Computer Engineering

Internships and Co-ops

At South Dakota Mines, 88% of computer engineering students land internships, earning an average salary of $20.19 per hour. Students in the computer engineering program work for these companies and government agencies, to name a few:

● Boeing
● Black Hills Energy
● Collins Aerospace
● Emerson
● Garmin
● General Electric (GE)
● John Deere
● Littelfuse
● NASA
● Nucor
● Seagate
● SpaceX

Career Outlook

South Dakota Mines computer engineering graduates earn an average starting salary of $72,175. The 2021-2022 job placement rate was 100%.

Computer Engineering Research

Undergraduates majoring in computer engineering at Mines, in addition to graduate students, have opportunities to engage and get involved in research. These are the primary research focus areas of the faculty.

● Mobile robotics path planning, localization and mapping, computer vision; evolutionary algorithms, particle and swarm methods, and biologically motivated algorithms.

● Scientific visualization, high-performance computing (HPC), problem-solving environments, algorithms and software for multicore architectures, topology-aware MPI communications, and scalable checkpointing techniques.

● Probabilistic artificial intelligence, statistical machine learning, neural networks, stochastic control theory, robotics, intelligent control, and computer vision.

● Computer vision, machine learning, data analytics, dynamic systems and control, multilinear subspace learning, and graph-based forecasting.

Program Offerings

• Degree: Bachelor of science degree in Computer Engineering
• Degree: Master of Science (MS) in Computer Science and Engineering
• Minors: Robotics, Avionics, System Engineering, Mathematics

*The BS in Computer Engineering is accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, http://www.abet.org .