Statistics:
| 13 active faculty |
| 33 graduate students |
The research in this department can be divided in three broad fields: solid mechanics and mechanics of materials, dynamics and space mechanics, and fluid mechanics. This department places great emphasis on interdisciplinary research. The faculty and graduate students often interact closely with researchers from various other fields like Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science (for computational issues in mechanics), Structural Engineering, and Physics. There are some crosscutting research areas in TAM, such as biomechanics, mathematical biology, computational mechanics, microelectromechanical system (MEMS), applied mathematics, and manufacturing.
The department has laboratories well equipped for work in stress analysis,vibration, nonlinear dynamics and chaos, ultrasonics, dynamic and fatigue fracture, composite materials, metal cutting, and inelastic deformation of materials. State-of-the-art facilities for materials processing and characterization are available through the Cornell Center for Materials Research. These include electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, X-ray deffraction, sample preparation, and mechanical testing. In addition, the facilities of the Cornell Nanofabrication Facility are available for design, fabrication, and testing of MEMS.
The department maintains a comprehensive, networked computer facility comprised of PCs, Macintosh, SUN, and DEC Alpha workstations. Software for numerical computation includes Macsyma, Mathematica, MATLAB, ABAQUS, and IMSL, as well as most programming languages. The computer facility is networked to all other university computing facilities including the Cornell Theory Center.
Though the department does not offer its own baccalaureate program, it is responsible for teaching engineering math (freshman and sophomore level) to all engineering students. The department also offers courses in mechanics and dynamics for sophomore students. The graduate students in the department are TAs for these classes. Thus, TAing in TAM is a different experience, as one has to teach students from other areas. Also, all engineering students have to take math classes and thus pass through TAM TAs. Hence, TAM graduate students affect each class of Cornell Engineering undergraduates.
The students graduating from the department have found jobs in a variety of engineering industries from aerospace to electronic packaging. A number of students have also successfully chosen academic careers and secured tenure track positions at prestigious universities across the nation.