Session 2

Engineering for Extreme Challenges

Solutions for Real-World Emergencies

What happens when a major storm floods a neighborhood, a heat wave pushes temperatures to dangerous levels, or a power outage leaves a community in the dark? In this course, you'll think like an engineer and tackle real-world challenges that affect people every day.

You'll explore how roads, buildings, power systems, water supplies, and communities are connected, and discover how one small problem can trigger a chain reaction of bigger issues. Through real disaster case studies, you'll investigate what happened, why it happened, and how engineers can design smarter solutions to keep people safe.

Then it's your turn to invent. Working in teams, you'll imagine, build, and test your own creative solutions, from flood protection systems and low-cost cooling technologies to emergency water filters and portable power devices. Using the engineering design process, you'll brainstorm ideas, build prototypes, learn from failures, and improve your designs. Along the way, you'll see how creativity, innovation, and problem-solving can help engineers make communities stronger, safer, and more resilient when disaster strikes.

Curriculum

In this program, students learn to think like systems-minded engineers—looking beyond isolated problems to understand the larger network at work. They map how roads, power, water, communication systems and community resources connect, then use decision timelines to unpack how engineering choices, policies, maintenance practices and budget priorities shaped real events. Along the way, they identify key stakeholders—from engineers and officials to residents and first responders—and examine where decision-making can clash with the needs of the people most affected.

With these insights, students set clear design criteria and constraints for their own disaster-response challenges, then build and test functional prototypes. They collect data to evaluate performance, analyze what failed and why and communicate their process through models, sketches and explanations that show what they built, the reasoning behind their choices and how they would improve the design next time.

Student in engineering lab
Planned Topics

First Response Engineering topics include systems thinking, disaster analysis, infrastructure resilience and community-centered design. Students explore how physical structures, social systems and environmental conditions interact during crises.

Hands-on prototyping connects directly to real-world challenges. Depending on the week’s disaster theme, students can design small-scale flood barriers, passive cooling devices, emergency water systems or other survival-focused solutions tailored to different communities. Throughout, they practice asking critical questions: Who is most at risk? Who makes the decisions? Who gets left out?

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Alisha Rodriguez
Faculty Lead
Alisha Rodriguez

Assistant Professor, School of Engineering and Computer Science

PhD, University of California, Davis. Hydrologic Sciences (2024)
MS, University of California, Davis. Civil and Environmental Engineering (2021)
BS, University of the Pacific. Civil Engineering (2018)

Dr. Rodriguez's PhD focused on groundwater modeling, specifically of managed aquifer recharge sites in California. Her current research focuses include groundwater modeling, conjunctive use of water resources and resiliency of water resources to changing water availability.

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Faculty Lead
David Mueller

Assistant Dean, School of Engineering and Computer Science

PhD, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Missouri, 2015
MS, Electrical Engineering, University of Missouri, 2008
BS, Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering, University of Missouri, 2006

Dr. David Mueller is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Assistant Dean for Technology and Facilities at Pacific's School of Engineering and Computer Science. His research interests include engineering education and renewable energy and carbon emissions of renewable resources such as wind and photovoltaics. 

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David Mueller
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