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Developments in technology drive and are driven by the entertainment industry. Entertainment companies have a near rabid obsession with incorporating the most cutting-edge technology into their products and pushing the technology to its very limit in pursuit of the ultimate experience for their audiences. Digital media and gaming are obvious examples of this technology drive in the virtual arena, but in the last decade, the world of live theatrical productions has also been pushing back the forefront of technology use in the entertainment industry.

Entertainment production companies, such as Cirque du Soleil and Fisher Technical Services and Simulation Technologies, are pushing the limits of the technology they are currently incorporating into their shows and are driving the development of new technology for use in future shows. In order to build new shows and maintain their existing shows, they need designers who have a solid grounding in engineering fundamentals as well as the knowledge of how these fundamentals are applied in an entertainment environment.

UNLV has created a new program in Entertainment Engineering and Design (EED) that addresses this need for such nontraditional designers. The EED program is an interdisciplinary collaboration between the College of Engineering and the College of Fine Arts that combines aspects of both curriculums. Uniquely positioned in what is becoming the entertainment capital of the United States, the goal of the program is to graduate students who can design, create, evaluate, and maintain the engineering systems used in the entertainment industry.