Welcome

Greetings from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Colorado School of Mines. ME@Mines continues to be the largest department on campus, with over 1,300 undergraduate majors and over 160 graduate students. The department continues to experience rapid growth, in terms of student enrollment, faculty size, and research volume. In this newsletter we highlight the many activities in the department over the last year in terms of teaching, research  and service.

Mines bachelor of science graduates in mechanical engineering are highly sought-after by industry. For the academic year 2017-2018, ME@Mines graduated 301 BSME students who have earned starting salaries averaging over $61K/year. In that same time frame, 55 MS and 5 PhD students graduated as well. ME@Mines’ biggest employers are in the aerospace and consulting industries, with over 140 different companies, national laboratories and universities hiring our student graduates. Additionally, 168 different companies hired Mines ME students as interns during the last academic year. These are outstanding employment metrics for ME students!

ME@Mines students continue to earn accolades in a number of ways. Our Diggerloop team, under the guidance of Prof. Kristina Csavina, is once again competing in the finals at SpaceX’s headquarters for the Hyperloop challenge. The Mines team was one of only 20 national and international teams selected to go to the challenge finals. A number of our graduate students have received outstanding awards including Matt Zappula’s Willy Korf award, Ashley Bucsek’s Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship award, and four ME students earning NSF Graduate Research Fellow awards. Kudos are also due to the ME members on our first place finishing team at the NASA deep space competition, and our ASME E-Fest West student team on their soccer playing robot.

Research is on an upward trajectory in the ME Department, exceeding $10 million for calendar year 2017. ME@Mines’ research growth is being advanced by a number of centers that call ME home: The ADAPT Center (Alliance for the Development of Additive Processing Technologies), the Continuous Casting Consortium, and the Colorado Fuel Cell Center. Two highlights of note include Prof. Rob Braun’s $3M new award from the department of energy’s ARPA-E program and Prof. Nils Tilton award of a prestigious Career Award from the National Science Foundation.

If you are ever in the Golden, Colorado, area and want to visit ME’s rapidly growing department, please stop by. I’ve seen incredible changes in ME since joining the faculty in 1994, and if it’s been a few years since you’ve visited campus I think you’ll be amazed as well!

John Berger
Department Head