Manufacturing Engineering (MS)

WPI’s MS in Manufacturing Engineering program gives you the skills and the knowledge to turn product ideas into functioning products that can be brought to the global market with improved cost, effectiveness, and sustainability.

In our flexible part-time or full-time program, you’ll advance your research studies and sharpen your professional understanding of how materials properties change during manufacturing processes while working with our expert faculty across engineering disciplines. You’ll choose to focus on one area or on a more comprehensive scope that could include additive manufacturing, robotics, machining, axiomatic design, materials processing, health care, or design.

Whether you move into industry or into research, you’ll become part of the next wave of engineers who find answers to the complex problems of continuing the rapid pace of industrial evolution with products that are environmentally safe, economically sustainable, practical, and useful.

Graduate Admissions

Curriculum

The MS in Manufacturing Engineering program includes courses in several engineering disciplines and a degree plan that includes either an independent study project, directed research, or a thesis. You’ll get a solid foundation in modern manufacturing techniques and business practices and an understanding of the science behind the processing/structure/property/performance relationships.

The program lets you choose a particular core area of interest from the following areas:

Control systems
Design
Financial processes
Health systems engineering
Manufacturing and materials processes
Manufacturing systems
Materials engineering
Statistics and quality assurance

Graduate Catalog

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Research

Manufacturing engineering students work alongside our world-class faculty on diverse and innovative research projects that could examine additive manufacturing to fix military machinery in the field or manufacturing to study how materials change as they are fabricated, heated, cooled, or under fatigue. Other faculty expertise include areas of cold spray manufacturing and battery development.

Current research by manufacturing engineering students:

Investigating anode materials for better battery life and performance
New laser processes
Designing and implementing lean manufacturing processes
Health care systems design and analysis

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4. Students in the program have access to state-of-the-art facilities, including the Metal Processing Institute, the largest university-industry consortium in North America.

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Research in WPI’s manufacturing and materials engineering program impacts industries as varied as healthcare, transportation, defense, consumer electronics, and energy.

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The manufacturing and materials engineering field is broad—students at WPI find themselves exploring varied research, including analyzing mathematical models for selecting the proper heat treatment of gears or exploring nanocomposites.

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Students work with WPI faculty—experts in cold-spray processing, heat treating, casting, surface metrology, rare earth metal extraction, or battery recycling and reuse—on research that will have immediate impact to humanity.

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A multidisciplinary approach means your work in manufacturing and materials engineering will consider the impacts your research has on other disciplines—the final result becomes stronger because of it.

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Graduate students come to WPI with different goals—their academic plans don't all look the same. Whether your career goal leads to industry or academia, you’ll tailor your own path to meet your individual goals.

Manufacturing Engineering students have access to many state-of-the-art labs and facilities for research and experiments. Our cutting-edge equipment includes several 3-D printers, an Alscan unit, and state-of-the-art surface metrology equipment.

Some of our innovative facilities:

Higgins Labs Machine Shop and Project Laboratory
Manufacturing Labs and Haas Technical Education Center
Manufacturing Control and Dynamics Laboratories
Metal Processing Institute
Surface Metrology Lab

Research & Facilities

Faculty Profiles

Richard D. Sisson

George F. Fuller Professor

, Mechanical Engineering

Richard D. Sisson, Jr. is the George F. Fuller Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Center for Heat Treating Excellence at WPI. Professor Sisson has been with WPI for 40+ years. In addition, he has taught at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and has been a research metallurgist with DuPont Savannah Laboratory and a staff engineer with Exxon Chemical Company.

Isa Bar-on

Professor-Engineering

, Mechanical Engineering

My favorite activities involve guiding students in projects and research. I like to give them independence and to learn from their work. I enjoy challenging them and myself to find better answers, explanations, and solutions. I am very interested in socio-technical systems, such as the healthcare system or the energy delivery system.

Christopher A. Brown

Professor

, Mechanical Engineering

Chris Brown has been on the WPI faculty since 1989. In 1983 he completed his doctoral work on machining at the University of Vermont, where he also worked in orthopedics and studied ski injuries. As an undergraduate, he was Vermont’s only walk-on All-American skier. He raced and coached there during the longest regular season undefeated streak in NCAA history and is a member of UVM’s athletic hall of fame.

Sharon Johnson

Professor

,

I enjoy teaching at WPI because students bring a lot of energy and enthusiasm to their learning, and I am often inspired by their optimism. My teaching also reflects topics that motivate me: detailed process design in our Industrial Engineering program, improving healthcare delivery as part of the Health Systems Innovation certificate, and exploring the implications of operational excellence in our MBA program.

Renata Konrad

Associate Professor-Business

,

The application of Industrial Engineering and mathematical knowledge has always been a rewarding challenge for me. Over the past several years, I have focused my research in the healthcare industry, which is particularly exciting given the current debates on healthcare reform. Current projects include evaluating anti-human trafficking efforts, computationally characterizing episodes of care from health insurance claim records and examining the impact of physician incentives on patient outcomes.

Makhlouf M. Makhlouf

Professor

, Mechanical Engineering

Makhlouf M. Makhlouf is professor of Mechanical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). He was Director of the Advanced Casting Research Center (ACRC) between 1992 and 2015. ACRC is a collaboration between the academic and industrial sectors focusing on issues that benefit the global foundry industry. It brings fundamental understanding to existing processes, develops new methods, and addresses management-technology interface matters.

Sneha P Narra

Assistant Professor

, Mechanical Engineering

As an active researcher in the field of Additive Manufacturing (AM), Sneha explores novel applications in metal AM by utilizing multidisciplinary knowledge from mechanical engineering, materials science, and manufacturing. Her research investigates additive manufacturing of novel materials and non-standard powders drawing upon her prior experience in microstructure and porosity control for metal AM processes.

After Graduation

Manufacturing Engineering Program

Affiliations:

Mechanical Engineering