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Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Welcome to the University of Central Florida’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. With a cadre of extremely talented faculty and staff members, more than 4,000 exceptional students and rapid growth in research enterprise, our goal is to become one of the most accomplished mechanical and aerospace departments in the nation.

We offer undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees in both mechanical engineering and aerospace engineering, along with a master’s degree in biomedical engineering. Through our curricula and our research, our faculty cover both traditional and contemporary areas including thermal fluids, mechanical systems, materials and structures, biomedical engineering, design and manufacturing, and much more.

Since 2014, when I joined UCF, I have witnessed first-hand a transformative growth in the university’s education and research endeavors. Faculty and staff crave to conduct outstanding research, and they have done so at the highest level. Within the department, our faculty have been published in top-industry journals and have earned multiple multi-million-dollar federal and industrial grants from agencies like NSF, DARPA and NIH, among others. We are also home to CATER, the Center for Advanced Turbomachinery and Energy Research, which partners with industry giants such as Siemens, GE, Mitsubishi and Aerojet Rocketdyne, to name a few.

The coming years will be very exciting as we will rapidly expand our academic portfolio and venture into new areas at the forefront of engineering research and education. We hope the forthcoming discoveries, concepts and theories of our researchers will lead intellectual discussions in the academic community. Additionally, we will continue to strive for inclusivity and diversity among our student population.

As we look forward to the future, the UCF College of Engineering and Computer Science is looking toward the past as it celebrates its 50th anniversary. Take a look at the college’s commemoration video and see if you can spot the references to the MAE department. Stay engaged with us @ucfmae on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, or drop me a line with your suggestions or comments.

Go Knights!

Yoav Peles, Ph.D.

Chair, UCF Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering