The Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering has 24 full-time faculty members, and approximately 400 undergraduate and 100 graduate students.  The faculty in the department are actively engaged in teaching, research and service across a wide spectrum of technical areas within mechanical and industrial engineering.

Current active research areas include Energy Systems with special emphasis on Off-shore Wind Energy and Energy Conservation, Mechanical Systems Design focusing on Sensors and Bioengineering, Information Engineering with concentration in Distributed Decision-making, Human-factored Engineering and Quality Management, Materials and Manufacturing with emphasis on Materials Processing and Intelligent Manufacturing, and Interfacial Fluid Mechanics with emphasis on Large Scale Simulation and Non-Newtonian Fluids.

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 on upcoming tours and open house 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

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News

Sudbury Student Drives Homewrecker" UMass Amherst mechanical engineering student Stacia Marcelynas, from Sudbury, Massachusetts, has done something only a few students anywhere have ever experienced. She drove the UMass Amherst entry in both the 2007 and 2008 Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Supermileage Competition at the Eaton Corporation proving grounds in Marshall, Michigan. This June, her vehicle named “Homewrecker” finished eighth in the national competition by getting 683 miles per gallon, despite tornado warnings and torrential rain that at one point forced her car off the track and into the high grass. Read more

Upgrading the Safety and Performance of Rocket Fuel Two researchers in the College of Engineering have received a prestigious $1-million Department of Defense (DoD) grant to boost the safety and performance of fuel used in thousands of satellites, space vehicles, rockets, and missiles. Their task will be to study the spray and combustion of gelled hypergolic propellants. A hypergolic propellant system is formed from a fuel and an oxidizer that ignite spontaneously when mixed so there is no need of an ignition mechanism in order to bring about combustion. David Schmidt of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department and Phillip R. Westmoreland of the Chemical Engineering Department will focus on fluid flow and chemistry, respectively. Read more

Undergrad Helps Companies Save Energy and Money Mechanical engineering senior Jonathan Labaki of Hyde Park was one member of the UMass Amherst Industrial Assessment Center (IAC) team who worked on an energy audit that Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick singled out for special attention this month as a paragon of his clean-energy strategy. The governor made the remarks on May 1 to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce in relation to Crane & Co., a venerable Commonwealth paper manufacturer. “The Industrial Assessment Center at UMass Amherst conducted a full energy audit,” said Governor Patrick. “Crane Paper has decided to implement all but one of the efficiency measures recommended. Here’s the punch line: That implementation will save them $600,000 a year. $600,000 a year.”
Read more

Mullen Hopes to Help Autistic Children "Self-Soothe" Brian Mullen, a 26-year-old mechanical engineering doctoral student from Dedham, Massachusetts, has won the $50,000 grand prize in the UMass Amherst Technology Innovation Challenge, or TIC, a competition for the best entrepreneurial technology business plan produced by students, recent alumni and faculty advisors on campus. Mullen is the founder of Therapeutic Systems, a concept business that will market a novel “deep-pressure vest,” developed in the UMass Amherst Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, that improves the quality of life for people with mental illness, especially autism, by providing a “portable hug.” An estimated three to four million patients suffer from developmental disorders such as autism. “It helps them self-soothe,” says Mullin about his vest. Read more

MIE News Archive