Dean's Welcome

I welcome you to our web pages on behalf of all of us -- the students, staff and faculty of the College of Engineering. This greeting is just one way to provide you with some information about our wide range of exciting activities. Our society is increasingly knowledge-based. Accordingly we produce graduates who have significant value added abilities and see themselves as life-long learners.

We have embarked on a number of initiatives designed to ensure our leadership in many new and exciting areas of research and education. Notable recent developments:

• A new residential experience in engineering offers outstanding opportunities for our students to acquire an education that will serve them well in the new global economy. Students enrolling in this program will live in an environment where they acquire valuable skills -- through immersion and osmosis -- that complement those acquired from instruction in classroom lectures.
• The Composite Vehicle Research Center focuses on advancing the design of composite shells and structures and integrating simulation and experiment in design protocols, in order to improve the performance of all types of vehicles.
• The Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center is a close collaboration of MSU and the University of Wisconsin. The goal of the Center is to increase the contribution of biofuels to the US energy portfolio by conducting fundamental research to remove current bottlenecks in the biofuel pipeline.
• The Energy & Automotive Research Laboratories focus on innovative engine design, on power electronics for hybrid vehicles, and on the development of thermoelectric devices to harvest waste energy from tailpipe emissions.

We continue our leadership activities in several existing centers, such as the Composite Materials and Structures Center, the Center for Nanostructured Biomimetic Interfaces, the Civil Infrastructure Laboratory and the Fraunhofer Center for Coatings and Laser Applications.

This web site contains a lot of information about us and through it we invite you to explore the many facets of the College of Engineering. We further invite you to call us and to visit our beautiful campus. I hope you enjoy browsing through our web site.

Satish Udpa, Ph.D.
Dean of Engineering