Duke Graduate School

The department has two major areas of graduate study: Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. Research efforts in Mechanical Engineering include unsteady aerodynamic and vortex dominated flows associated with aeroelasticity and aeroacoustics of aircraft and turbomachinery. Research in dynamics includes aeroelasticity, controls, acoustics, adaptive structures and systems, and chaos. Energy, heat transfer, and intelligent systems are also active areas of research in the department. Research efforts in Materials Science include cellular structure and mechanics, surface and interfacial phenomena, single molecule mechanics, and stimulus-responsive surfaces. Research in plasmonics, electronic materials, ferrofluids and their applications, and microhydrodynamics is also strongly represented in the department. Graduate students work in close collaboration with faculty on state-of-the-art, and often, interdisciplinary research programs. The low faculty-to-student ratio provides a close knit scholarly community, and the graduate program is unusually flexible in meeting the needs of individual students. The department operates twenty different laboratories which contain a large array of equipment and characterization facilities. A broad range of computational equipment is also available, including connections to a regional supercomputer.