ABSTRACT
Modern engineering encompasses diverse multidisciplinary areas. Therefore, there is a critical need to identify new directions in research and engineering education addressing, pursuing, and implementing new meaningful and pioneering research initiatives and designing the engineering curriculum. By integrating various disciplines and tools, mechatronics provides multidisciplinary leadership and supports the current gradual changes in academia and industry. There is a strong need for an advanced research in mechatronics and a curriculum reform for undergraduate and graduate programs. Recent research developments and drastic technological advances in electromechanical motion devices, power electronics, solid-state devices, microelectronics, micro-and nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS and NEMS), materials and packaging, computers, informatics, system intelligence, microprocessors and
DSPs, signal and optical processing, computer-aided-design tools, and simulation environments have brought new challenges to the academia. As a result, many scientists are engaged in research in the area of mechatronics, and engineering schools have revised their curricula to offer the relevant courses in mechatronics.
