Quick Facts

  • Full-time faculty: 22
  • Undergraduate students: 175
  • Graduate students: 134
  • Annual research expenditures: $3.5 million

Research Areas

  • Aerospace Engineering
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Design and Manufacturing of Mechanical and Aerospace Systems
  • Fluid Mechanics, Thermal Science and Energy
  • Mechantronics, Robotics and Controls
  • Solid Mechanics and Materials Science

Centers & Institutes

  • Biofluid Dynamics Laboratory
  • Bioengineering Laboratory for Nanomedicine and Tissue Engineering
  • Center for Biomimetics and Bioinspired Engineering
  • Computational Aerodynamics and Hydrodynamics Laboratory
  • Computational Materials Science and Molecular Modeling Group
  • Flight Dynamics and Controls Laboratory
  • GW Institute for Biomedical Engineering
  • GW Institute for Nanotechnology
  • Micropropulsion and Nanotechnology Laboratory
  • Multiscale Computational Mechanics Laboratory
  • Robotics and Mechantronics Laboratory
  • Smart Systems Laboratory

Quick Facts

Quick Facts

Degrees And Programs

Undergraduate (B.S., 5-year B.S./M.S.):

  • Mechanical Engineering: with options in aerospace; biomechanical engineering; patent law; medical-prep; and robotics
     

Graduate (M.S., Ph.D., Appl. Scientist, Eng):

  • Mechanical Engineering: with focus areas in aerospace; industrial engineering; design of mechanical engineering systems; fluid mechanics, thermal science, and energy; solid mechanics and materials science; structures and dynamics; and robotics, mechatronics, and controls
     

Certificate Programs:

In the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, faculty and students conduct research that runs the gamut from traditional mechanical and aerospace engineering to emerging areas in biomedical engineering, nanotechnology, and mechatronics and robotics.

The Department is home to one of the nation’s leading fluid dynamics research programs. Fluid dynamics research impacts transportation, energy, medicine, weather prediction, and many other fields.

Professor Lijie Grace Zhang and her doctoral students are working to understand how nanoscale and chemical environments control stem cell differentiation, which will be a significant step toward successfully using adult stem cells to treat human diseases.

Professor Michael Keidar is using plasmas to create new micro-propulsion devices called micro-vacuum arc thrusters, which provide small forces that can be used to correct or sustain satellites in their orbits. The primary benefit of this type of device is that it can operate for very long periods of time without any degradation of performance.

An expert in computational fluid dynamics, Professor Elias Balaras is using high performance parallel computing to conduct research on cardiovascular blood flow mechanics and hemodynamics of biomedical devices. His research aims to improve understanding of cardiovascular disease and develop tools for surgical planning such as one that would allow surgeons to do virtual surgery and optimize the procedure for each patient before performing the actual operation.

Professor Kausik Sarkar is collaborating with a colleague from Boston University to develop new ultrasound-based molecular imaging of diseases. The project aims to engineer tiny lipid-coated bubbles that are targeted to specific diseases and can be injected into a patient; once injected, the bubbles will attach themselves to the diseased part of the body and show up in the ultrasound image.