Purdue ME ranked number 1 in the country

Purdue University has the #1 mechanical engineering program in the country over the last five years, according to the scholarly analytics platform ScholarGPS.

ScholarGPS includes detailed information pertaining to 30 million individual scholars at 120,000 institutions worldwide. They use machine learning algorithms and statistical analysis to offer unbiased, quantitative evaluation of academic institutions. According to their analysis, Purdue’s School of Mechanical Engineering is ranked #13 in the world, #7 in the United States lifetime, and #1 in the USA in the last five years.

“This is an outstanding achievement for our school,” said Eckhard Groll, William E. and Florence E. Perry Head of Mechanical Engineering and Reilly Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering. “We are always striving to deliver the best educational experience in the country, and it’s gratifying to see that recognized by outside organizations.”

In 2024, Purdue passed Georgia Tech to become the largest mechanical engineering school in the country. Purdue’s School of Mechanical Engineering currently enrolls 3,214 undergraduate students and 1,146 graduate students — more than twice the population from just a decade ago. “Unlike MIT and Stanford, we are a land-grant school. It’s in our charter to open our doors wide and share our education with as many people as possible,” said Groll. “That’s particularly true of mechanical engineering — the flagship school at Purdue — which has the broadest application to so many areas of business, government, and research. And yet we’ve still kept tuition frozen for 14 years.”

Highly Ranked Scholars

Beyond ranking institutions, ScholarGPS also quantifies the work of individual researchers. The most cited and significant individuals in their fields are highlighted as Highly Ranked Scholars. Purdue Mechanical Engineering faculty are well-represented in these lists:

  • Issam Mudawar is the #3 scholar in the world for heat transfer, the #2 scholar for boiling, and the #1 scholar for heat sinks. Mudawar has long been one of the most highly-cited heat transfer researchers in the world.
  • Andrea Vacca is the #2 scholar for fluid power. Vacca leads Maha Labs, the largest academic fluid power lab in the country.
  • Steve Son is the #4 scholar lifetime in propellants. He conducts research at Zucrow Labs, the largest academic propulsion lab in the world.
  • Yung Shin is the #6 ranked scholar for manufacturing and #4 for machine tooling. He conducts manufacturing research at the Manufacturing and Materials Research Laboratories (MMRL).
  • Farshid Sadeghi is the #6 scholar lifetime in tribology.
  • Bin Yao is the #8 ranked scholar lifetime in mechatronics, #8 for motion control, #1 for robust control.
  • Babak Anasori is in the top 100 scholars for all of mechanical engineering over the last five years.
  • Song Zhang is the #3 scholar lifetime for structured light, and #6 for metrology in the last five years.
  • Eckhard Groll is the #5 scholar lifetime for refrigeration.
  • Xiaoping Du is #1 in survival analysis, #5 in uncertainty analysis, and #13 in reliability engineering.

ScholarGPS also recognizes the lifetime contributions of faculty who are no longer at Purdue. Jim Braun, who recently retired from Purdue, is the #1 scholar in the world for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (former Purdue ME faculty Yan Chen is #3). Monika Ivantysynova, the founder of Maha Labs, is the #1 scholar lifetime in the field of fluid power. Ray Viskanta, the #7 scholar lifetime in the field of heat transfer, taught at Purdue for 39 years.

“I am so proud of my colleagues in the Purdue ME faculty,” Groll said. “They undertake world-changing research every day, and this analysis shows how crucial their work is to the foundations of science worldwide — and more specifically to our students, alumni, and industry partners at Purdue.”

Many Metrics

For many years, U.S. News and World Report has served as the de facto standard for university rankings. Purdue has achieved a fair amount of success in the U.S. News lists — both graduate and undergraduate Mechanical Engineering programs have been ranked in the top 10 for nearly three decades, and Purdue ME’s Online Master’s has been ranked #1 in all six years of that particular ranking. But Groll is encouraged to see similar results from a diversity of objective sources.

“Ranking our colleagues at these great universities is an impossible task,” he said. “There are many nuances and layers to each program. For years we’ve relied solely on the U.S. News and World Report rankings, but it’s great that we now have many alternatives to help people make these decisions.”

Purdue University has appeared in increasing numbers of rankings and lists from outside organizations:

More notable Purdue rankings can be found here.

 

Writer: Jared Pike, jaredpike@purdue.edu, 765-496-0374