The Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering enrolls over four hundred undergraduate students and one hundred graduate students. There are twenty three full-time faculty members. The core technical areas in the department are: Design of Mechanical Systems, Dynamics & Control, Industrial Engineering & Operations Research, Materials & Manufacturing and Thermodynamics & Fluids. Faculty, students, and staff, working in these areas have an impact in three sectors of modern society: energy & environment, healthcare, and transportation & aerospace.
In energy & environment, there is emphasis in wind energy, energy conservation, and climate-change policy. Specific areas in healthcare include assistive and therapeutic technologies, analysis & design of biological systems and biomedical devices, and modeling & analysis of health care delivery systems. Work in the five core areas help advance transportation and aerospace research. The Thermodynamics & Fluids group works on advanced simulation and experimentation to solve fundamental and applied problems in turbulence, multiphase flows and Non-Newtonian fluid mechanics. Our Materials & Manufacturing and Dynamics & Control groups conduct research in high temperature materials, as well as sensing, control and condition monitoring of vehicle and manufacturing systems. Faculty in Industrial Engineering & Operations Research investigate innovative logistics, supply chain and network design concepts in transportation and aerospace. A state-of-art driving simulator facility is used to advance traffic safety research.
The department offers fully-accredited B.S. degree programs in both Mechanical Engineering (B.S.M.E.) and Industrial Engineering (B.S.I.E.) and has an honors option for qualified students. In addition, the department has Ph.D. and Master's programs in M.E. and I.E.
You can follow the links in the sidebar for more information on our department, our faculty and their research, the different degree programs we offer, as well as news and upcoming events.
Location: UMass Amherst College of Engineering
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, 220 ELAB,
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003-2210
(413) 545-2505
Wiley-Blackwell Publishes Second Edition of “Wind Energy Explained” The Wiley-Blackwell publishing house has just issued the second edition of the bestselling text book, “Wind Energy Explained: Theory, Design and Application,” by James. F. Manwell and Jon G. McGowan of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) Department and former MIE Senior Research Fellow Anthony L. Rogers. “We are very excited about this!” says Manwell. “The second edition is a substantial expansion and upgrade over the first edition and has taken a long time to complete.” This second edition includes up-to-date data, diagrams, illustrations, and thorough new material on: the fundamentals of wind turbine aerodynamics; wind turbine testing and modeling; wind turbine design standards; offshore wind energy; and special purpose applications, such as energy storage and fuel production. Read More
Smith Part of "Best Paper" Team James MacGregor Smith of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department was part of a research team that just won this year’s “Best Paper Award,” as chosen by the Computational Optimization and Applications (COAP) editorial board from the journal’s previous year’s (2008) articles. Smith shares the honor with co-authors Peter Hahn, Bum-Jin Kim, Monique Guignard-Spielberg, and Yi-Rong Zhu at the University of Pennsylvania for their paper "An algorithm for the generalized quadratic assignment problem," published in Volume 40, Issue 3, pages 351-372, of 2008. COAP is a peer reviewed journal that is committed to timely publication of research and tutorial papers on the analysis and development of computational algorithms and modeling technology for optimization. It examines algorithms either for general classes of optimization problems or for more specific applied problems, stochastic algorithms, as well as deterministic algorithms. Read More
Reception for New Students!
All incoming students were welcomed into the Department by Professor Fisher, the Department Head, and Professor Rinderle, the Associate Department Head, on a beautiful fall day. They signed the MIE register and mingled with other new students, upper level undergraduates and faculty. Members of the various honorary and professional societies were present to talk with the new students. The new students could also talk with existing undergraduates who had helped build the award winning supermileage vehicle. A slide show of the event is available here.
MIE Researchers Featured in Physics TodayThe October 2009 Physics Today cover story looks at the work on superhydrophobic surfaces being done by several researchers in the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department. As the story notes, “Researchers led by Jonathan Rothstein at the University of Massachusetts Amherst now offer a proof-of-principle demonstration of a new, passive option for reducing drag in a turbulent flow. They tailored the microscale structure of a hydrophobic material—polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), akin to the rubbery polymer used to caulk bathtubs—to create air pockets that allow the flow to “slip” (shear free) at the liquid–air interface. The greater the area covered by air pockets, the greater the overall reduction in shear stress—up to 50%, the researchers estimate.” Besides Rothstein, the other researches cited in the article were Blair Perot, R. J. Daniello, N. E. Waterhouse, J. Ou, and Michael Martell. Read the article. Read More
Muriel Wins Moving Spirit Award Ana Muriel, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, is the 2009 winner of the Moving Spirit Award, as chosen by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). The award was established to recognize outstanding INFORMS volunteers who have been "moving spirits" in their respective forums within the organization. INFORMS is the largest professional society in the world for academics and industrial personnel in the field of operations research. It was established in 1995 with the merger of the Operations Research Society of America and The Institute of Management Sciences. Dr. Muriel was the president of the Women in Operations Research/Management Sciences (WORMS) forum of INFORMS in 2008-2009 and presided over the WORMS meetings at the national conference of INFORMS, held last October in Washington, D.C. Read More
Muriel Wins Moving Spirit Award