Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering
Department Overview
The 2010-11 Year saw an increase in student enrollment, funding, and publications at the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering (MME). Two associate professors were promoted to full professors. One professor was recognized by the university as the Outstanding Professor for 2010. MME students won several awards.
Department Highlights
The Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering won two UGS internal grants to enhance the graduate student experience through seminars where guest speakers were brought in from outside the university to speak about research topics relevant to MME students; and, to enhance MME graduate student recruitment ability to include modernization of the department’s website, having a meet and greet with outside companies, and creating updated brochures to send to prospective students. Eight notable researchers came to speak at the Graduate Seminar.
Indranil Lahiri won 2nd place for Best Paper of the TMS society. Debrupa Lahiri won best Poster Award at the MST’10 conference. Mr. Stephen Wood won the best DOE Waste Management poster competition. Mr. Puneet Gill was given the LeaderShape Award by the ASM Foundation.
MME undergraduate students participated in the 7th UAS competition in Washington, DC, SAE AeroDesign in Brazil, Shell-Eco Marathon, SAE Supermileage, and AUVSI SUAS 2011 competitions.
Dr. Arvind Agarwal was chosen as an FIU Outstanding Professor; Dr. Tosunoglu won the University Teaching Award. Drs. Agarwal and Choi were promoted to full professors as of August 2011. Professor Gordon Hopkins retired in February, 2011 and was named Dean Emeritus for the College.
Andres Tremante was featured on many radio shows, and on Univision and on CNN en Espanol TV shows as a guest speaker about the tsunami/nuclear containment problems in Japan. Surendra Saxena spoke at an Energy Panel Discussion hosted by the Ford Motor Company in Nov 2010.
The department’s 15 faculty published 13 book chapters, 4 books, 109 conference proceedings papers, 92 journal papers, 3 monographs, and 13 technical reports. The books/book chapters/journals/monographs output increased by 17.9% over last year, whereas the proceedings publications doubled.
Research and Funding
The department external research funding in 2010-2011 reached $2.3M which was a 3.7% increase over last year’s external research funding. The total number of proposals awarded for the department was 46, of which 14 were new awards
Fall Term Enrollment
Five Year Fall Term Enrollment MME
Degrees Awarded
Degrees Awarded MME
Sponsored Research Awards ($Millions)
Five Year Award History MME