The PhD in Mechanical Engineering program at WPI allows you to advance your studies and contribute original research to your chosen focus. Our flexible, multidisciplinary curriculum and extensive industry connections let you pursue the most appropriate and tailored path to exceed your career goals and address the major engineering challenges of the 21st century.
Working alongside our world-renowned faculty and within a collaborative and supportive research environment, you’ll lead breakthrough research in areas like assistive technology, biomedical robots, digital manufacturing, electronics cooling, nanotechnology, holography, and medical imaging that can have life-changing results.
You can tailor WPI’s Mechanical Engineering PhD program to suit your professional and personal goals. After passing an admissions exam that determines your abilities in several areas, you’ll take courses or complete an independent study project in your field of interest while leading up to your dissertation research.
Our many research centers offer the input of almost 100 members across several industries and offer rich opportunities for diverse projects. The cooperative atmosphere brings innovative research prospects with the support of both WPI and industry partners.
As a PhD candidate at WPI, we don’t expect your research to simply confront obvious challenges—we want you to identify problems no one has identified before. We’ll give you the support and the facilities to do just that in several labs or within one of the department’s many industry-supported centers.
WPI’s extensive, well-funded facilities accommodate nearly every research niche in the field. In our state-of-the-art labs, you’ll have access to the latest equipment and will foster collaborative relationships with fellow researchers across disciplines.
I enjoy teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Teaching is very rewarding, and it allows me to interact with the students. My teaching portfolio includes undergraduate and graduate level courses in the areas of heat transfer, fluid mechanics, liquid/vapor phase change, thermodynamics, and design of thermal systems.
Autonomous vehicles – aircraft, cars, rovers, over- and underwater vehicles that can move in the real world by themselves without human pilotage – have gained immense importance not only due to the broad spectrum of their potential military and civilian applications, but also due to the concurrent development of sensor technology and embedded systems that enable the realization of true autonomy.
Professor Fischer is the William Smith Dean's Professor and a faculty member in Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Engineering with an appointment in Biomedical Engineering at WPI. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 2008 from Johns Hopkins University, where he was part of the NSF Engineering Research Center for Computer Integrated Surgery. At WPI he has been an integral part of developing the Robotics Engineering program and teaches primarily junior-level and graduate courses in Robotics.
My research is aimed towards understanding fundamental aspects of reacting flows at thermodynamic conditions of relevance to aircraft, rocket, and automobile propulsion. Reacting flow phenomena occurring in engines are complicated as a result of turbulent flow, interaction with solid boundaries, and extreme thermodynamic conditions. In order to understand and simulate combustion phenomena under such conditions, there is a necessity to develop accurate chemical kinetic and molecular transport models in addition to fluid mechanics models.
My research bridges the gap between human-robot interaction and human movement science. I am particularly interested in the design of human-robot interfaces and assistive robot autonomy, based on the understanding of the perception-action coupling of humans and cyber-human systems. At WPI, I primarily work on tele-nursing robots and assisted teleoperation interfaces. I also have extensive experience in exoskeletons for rehabilitation and tele-surgical robots.
The overarching theme of my research is light-matter interactions and their applications in microscale and nanoscale. Particularly, my research interests include optical trapping, optofluidics, nanophotonics, cavity optomechanics, and fiber optic sensing systems, with an emphasis on optical actuation, damping, and sensing of mechanics in micro-/nano-scale structures and biological specimens. The potential applications of my research include on-chip disease diagnosis, in vivo disease treatments, motion detection in consumer electronics, health monitoring, and biomechanics.
Dr. Panchapakesan is the director of the Small Systems Laboratory (SSL) which is dedicated to the development of multi-functional materials, devices and systems at the macro-, micro-, meso- and nanoscales. Our work spans in multiple areas bridging multiple disciplines and multiple length scales. Facilities at SSL include fabrication and characterization units for advanced materials, device processing and testing and biomaterials characterization. Access to the clean room facilities around the Boston area adds to the excitement of student learning as well as experimentation.
The project mode of education is a significant tenet of WPI; project based courses are common, along with the required Interactive Qualifying Project and Major Qualifying Project. Managing this close knit intellectual activity has m any parallels to coaching sports; watching individuals " light up" is tremendously rewarding. The recent addition of the Great Problems Seminar allows strong interaction with the freshman class as well. The thermofluid area is critical to world sustainability and extends beyond technical expertise to socio- political and economic context.
