Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

Through a combination of fundamental classwork and independent research across a broad spectrum of mechanical engineering and materials science, Rice's graduate program is an interdisciplinary program offering a core activity in advanced materials research and special research opportunities in nanotechnology, metals physics, statistical mechanics, metallic solid thermodynamics, materials chemistry, aspects of composites, coatings and thin films, and interface science.

Rice provides both a collaborative and comprehensive approach to mechanical engineering and materials science, and students benefit from the University's Houston location, where they pursue opportunities for research and study at both NASA and the largest medical center in the world, the Texas Medical Center (TMC), where several institutions conduct research in the areas of biomechanics and biomaterials. On campus, collaborations with the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics involve computational methods and optimization. Research in robotics is done in cooperation with the Department of Computer Science and with a number of institutions in the Texas Medical Center. The campus wide Rice Quantum Institute also is active in the research of electronic materials and other aspects of materials science.

Areas of Research
-Mechanics
-Computational mechanics
-Stochastic mechanics
-Fluid dynamics
-Heat transfer
-Dynamics and control
-Robotics
-Biomedical systems
-Aerospace sciences