Master of Engineering Leadership in Design Innovation
Lean into leadership with MELDI
Do you see challenges as opportunities? Become the leader needed in a changing world. The unique MELDI degree combines advanced technical engineering courses with learning in management, leadership, and design innovation.
Working across disciplines equips you with an outstanding set of skills. It will give you both the depth and breadth of expertise to make a difference when a difference is needed.
The future is here, and it needs you
You are inspired to make positive change through engineering knowledge and skills. You are smart, capable, ambitious and eager to move into new responsibilities. To get there you need to update and upgrade your skills and expertise. The MELDI gives you the edge you need to move ahead.
Focus on the personal and professional
Explore your personal leadership approaches. Gain an understanding of how organizations function and the process of change. Enhance your communication skills. Engage with a team of peers on a design innovation project for a real client. Learn in a supportive community with mentors committed to your success. The MELDI will give you the means to step up and step out with your technical management skills.
MELDI program overview
The interdisciplinary MELDI promotes advanced technical knowledge, change management skills, and a design method for innovative engineering. It is a comprehensive approach to engineer training and learning to meet the needs of the 21st century.
Within the overall MELDI program are options and opportunities to focus on technical concentrations that deepen your engineering knowledge. All options are focused forward on transformations in engineering and the world. Explore our four technical concentrations and choose the one that is right for you.
Program Stream 1: Modern Decarbonized Energy Systems
Lead the transformation, now and into the future, away from carbon emitting energy pollution. Accelerate the shift to decarbonized energy systems with technical expertise and management knowledge. Adapt power systems to new energy sources, increasing energy demands, and climate extremes. This technological, economic, and social transition requires innovation and investment with critical policy support. This program area will give you the knowledge required to enable both creative approaches and decision making that will affect the global population and planet health for the foreseeable future.
Concentration 1: Energy Transitions for the Future
Led by chemical engineering
Take your background in engineering and be the leader who can advance energy generation choices as an essential solution to carbon emissions.
From renewables to advanced nuclear, investments in clean energy generation are critical for future energy supplies. New policies, regulations, industries, and businesses enable the shift. Be ready to participate in the great revolution of clean energy generation.
Advanced technical course topics:
- Renewable energy generation
- Generation IV and advanced nuclear power systems
- Bio-energy production
- Environmental regulations
Concentration 2: Resilient Power Systems
Led by electrical engineering
Energize your electrical engineering background with the race to decarbonize the energy system. Rethink generation, distribution, and consumption. Explore digital technologies to make the system smarter and more efficient. Lead in power system design and management for a smoother transition.
Advanced technical course topics:
- Industrial electronics
- Renewable energy systems
- Power system optimization
- Power system stability
Program Stream 2: Manufacturing and Design
How we make things and the materials we use are changing rapidly. Harness the rapid change in the 4th industrial revolution. This program area focuses on new materials and new methods of manufacturing. It is situated within the discussions of cradle-to-cradle production and the circular economy. Issues of efficiency, biodegradable materials, additive processes, and the use of smart digital technologies to eliminate waste and speed up production are a part of this program area.
Concentration 3: Building Better Communities
Led by civil engineering
Do you yearn to help solve the global housing crisis and future proof communities? Investigate new methods that speed up production and make it safer and greener at the same time. Ground your work in the question of how to build better homes and buildings. Then expand your design engineering skills to promote equitable and resilient communities.
Advanced technical course topics:
- Advanced digital technologies in the built environment
- Building sustainable and equitable communities
- Construction materials for the future
- Energy efficiency in building design
Concentration 4: Innovative Manufacturing
Led by mechanical engineering
New materials. New methods. New digital technologies. Manufacturing is getting a redo. Jump into the circular economy, 4th industrial revolution, and advancing digital technologies. Explore robotics, machine learning, AI, computer vision, 3D printing and more.
Advanced technical course topics:
- Advanced manufacturing technologies
- Additive manufacturing
- Advanced materials
- Automation and industry 4.0
All advanced concentrations are supported by UNB Engineering’s globally recognized and respected research. Indicate your concentration when you apply.
Reach higher and go further with MELDI
Lead the way to market
Management and leadership courses focus on becoming a leader for change and innovation within a company. Investigate communication and leadership skills, the ability to do a systems analysis on an organization and to spot obstacles to innovation. Then take your leadership outside of the industry into the greater community.
Innovate with a team
Design innovation starts with the theory of design and the process of creating and innovating. It includes a two-term, team-based, industry-led project with a real client. With your teammates, you will innovate a new product, process or system to meet the needs of an industrial partner. You will be accompanied along the way by mentors and professional experts.
Grow your professional network
The design project and the highly recommended summer co-op work term will give you important industry connections for your job hunt after graduation.
Dive into the details
Degree benefits
Take your advanced technical expertise and step into leadership. The field of engingeering is changing rapidly to an emphasis on interdisciplinary team work. There is a new urgency to promote resiliency and sustainability along with advances in processes and materials. Technical experts who can lead and innovate are essential to the global shifts and transformations.
The MELDI is
- comprehensive, with a well balanced approach to interdisciplinary engineering leadership,
- future focused, to help you evaluate, analyze and understand the context of your work in a changing world,
- challenging, through skill development in management, leadership, and design innovation, and
- designed to enhance your creativity, with a two-term design studio.
Management and leadership course topics
Be the change you want to see with a curriculum based on change management. The leadership and management courses start with personal leadership styles and approaches and end with a view to the wider world to enable leadership in any context.
- Leading as an Engineer
- Communicating innovation and change
- Understanding systems
- Managing innovative engineering projects
- Managing innovative organizations
- Engineers exercising leadership
Design innovation course topics
Start with a foundational methodology of design innovation. Then apply the theory in experiential learning and a team project.
- Transformative design for a transforming world
- Strategizing design
- Design innovation studio 1
- Design innovation studio 2
Common technical courses
There are common technical courses for all students.
- Computer Programming (refresher course for all students in August)
- Engineering Mathematics (refresher course for all students in August)
- Data Science and Application (all first-year students)
- Five advanced technical courses in your concentration
How to apply
This is a premium program with early application deadlines. Mark these dates for a start in August 2025.
- Applications open for fall 2025 on Nov. 15, 2024.
- Applications close for fall 2025 on Feb. 1, 2025.
- Applicants notified of acceptance by Feb. 28, 2025.
What it takes to join us
- Check that you qualify with an undergraduate degree that prepares you for your chosen specialization.
- Make sure you are ready for advanced technical training with a minimum Canadian GPA of 3.0 (B) average.
- Complete the application. A complete application, with references, can be processed more quickly.
- If you are an international applicant whose first language is not English, submit language scores. See Graduate School Admissions for language requirements.
- See the School of Graduate Studies for more details.
