Engineering Discovery
Carnegie Mellon College of Engineering is ranked among the best engineering colleges in the world. Our reputation is powered by the worldclass faculty we attract and accelerated by the dynamic and diverse learning opportunities our students discover in our labs and classrooms.
ACADEMIC PROGRAMS
• Chemical Engineering
• Civil Engineering
• Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Environmental Engineering
• Materials Science and Engineering
• Mechanical Engineering
Additional Major Options
• Biomedical Engineering
• Engineering and Public Policy
• Engineering Design, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship
BEAUTY BREAKTHROUGHS
Naomi Dibong, a chemical engineering major with an additional major in biomedical engineering, wants to develop accessible and inclusive skincare products and find new ways to treat skin conditions. In addition to coursework in formulation and process engineering, she has had a nine-month fellowship with L’Oréal; a summer internship at Unilever, where she did benchwork for skincare brands; and she participated in a career preparation program through the American Academy of Dermatology. These experiences have confirmed her path toward medical school.
PRINTING PICKLEBALL PADDLES
When students in the materials science and engineering capstone course were trying to find out if pickleball paddles produced by 3D printing could be as good as, or better, than those produced using existing techniques, their first attempt didn’t work. So, they turned to nature for inspiration and discovered that honeycombs and bamboo cross-sections provided naturally stable, lightweight design. By mimicking those bioinspired structures, the students produced the paddles using only the exact amount of material needed for printing—reducing the plastic waste common in other manufacturing methods.
Naomi Dibong (second from right) at the American Academy of Dermatology career prep program in Chicago.
Cover photo: Mechanical engineering student, Cole Herber, with the Tartan Autonomous Underwater Vehicle team’s RoboSub
Engineering Innovation
MAJOR INNOVATION
Carnegie Mellon University is where researchers come together to explore new approaches and solve complex problems. Engineering research here is achieved through innovation and accelerated by Advanced Collaboration®
The Engineering Design, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship additional major equips students with the formal engineering innovation, design, and business skills needed to deliver viable product solutions to the marketplace and society.
RESEARCHING A HOT TOPIC
River Sepinuck found a way to combine his long-time interest in 3D printing with his future career ambitions in industrial robotics. The mechanical engineering junior indulges both passions as a member of Sneha Prabha Narra’s wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) research team. After learning the WAAM 3D printing process that uses a robotic arm to move a welding torch to melt metal wire feedstock with an electric arc heating source, River designed a device that can measure melt-pool temperatures which affect the quality of the metal part being produced.
MULTI-SIZED ROBOTS FOR MULTIPLE TASKS
From miniature robots that crawl through pipes to quadrupedal robots that walk like a dog, Carnegie Mellon engineers build robots that can walk, run, jump, roll, swim and even fly. Our faculty and students are making smart, adaptive, collaborative robots for applications in manufacturing, healthcare, disaster recovery, agriculture and more.
Creativity Counts
Our students learn to integrate technology, science, and art. They envision bold ideas, conceive novel approaches, and engineer creative solutions. Hands-on making and interactive learning here is so much fun it’s easy to forget that it’s schoolwork.
BUZZ-WORTHY DESIGN COURSE
In a recent civil and environmental engineering project course, students designed, built, and deployed homes for a cavity-nesting species of bees. Like many engineering challenges, there were multiple factors to consider.
The students found ways to optimize the safety and well-being of bees and satisfy the size, aesthetic, and maintenance needs of the gardens, parks, and nature centers where the bee hotels would be deployed.
TECH SPARK
Carnegie Mellon’s largest maker space is where engineering students have access to a wood shop, machine shop, design studio, power tools, electronic benches, hot metals studio, paint booth, a fab lab with laser cutters, 3D printer, sewing machines, and more. Tech staff teach courses, train users, and are regularly on hand to support the hands-on learning and making that happen here.
SEW SUSTAINABLE
The Fifth Year Scholars Program offers exceptional students the opportunity to stay at CMU after graduating. Civil and environmental engineering graduate, Kat D’Armsis, used the opportunity to share her sewing skills to teach others how to mend clothing. She taught workshops at Tech Spark and at the IDeATe (Integrative Design, Arts, and Technology) workspace. As an environmental engineer, Kat sees mending as a way to combat waste generated by the fashion industry, which is the second largest polluter in the world, just behind oil and gas pollution.
IDEATE
IDeATe, the Integrative Design, Arts, and Technology network, merges technology and creativity and provides learning opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration in game design; animation & special effects; media design; sonic arts; design for learning, innovation & entrepreneurship; intelligent environments; physical computing; soft technologies; and immersive technologies in arts & culture.
Teams Succeed
Engineering is a team sport. Joining student organizations, celebrating campus traditions, and working together on group projects allows our students to harness the power of collaboration to solve complex problems with multi-disciplinary approaches.
EYE OPENING DESIGN
Maya Beach credits the varied perspectives and talents of her teammates from mechanical, civil, electrical and computer engineering, information systems, and architecture, for being able to construct a building-sized portrait of Disney Pixar’s WALL-E for Carnegie Mellon’s annual Spring Carnival Booth competition.
The mechanical engineering student says that the team had access to campus resources they needed to bring their booth to life by making WALL-E’s eyes move. She also says that the experience allowed her to explore her fun, artistic side — while still utilizing the more technical knowledge she is learning in engineering classes.
CARNEGIE MELLON HACKING TEAM WINS AGAIN
As the number of cybersecurity attacks continues to increase worldwide, competitions like DEF CON’s Capture-the-Flag give cybersecurity engineers the opportunity to learn and develop new techniques as they vie against one another to work through various challenges.
Carnegie Mellon University’s Plaid Parliament of Pwning (PPP) became the winningest team in DEF CON’s Capture-the-Flag competition by having won nine times in the past 13 years.
ENGINEERING BIRDS THAT CAN SWIM
Mechanical and electrical and computer engineering students joined forces with computer science students to compete in RoboSub, an international competition in which teams design and build underwater robots that can perform tasks important to the maritime industry, including exploring, detecting, and manipulating objects.
The TartanAUV team takes inspiration from birds that are known for their ability to dive underwater for fish by naming their latest underwater robot, Osprey, which will feature better thermal regulation and system dynamics needed to outperform the previous vehicle, Kingfisher.
Opportunity Knocks
And when it does, it’s top employers and prestigious graduate schools who want the best-trained engineers. Carnegie Mellon engineering graduates are ready for these opportunities thanks to the academic rigor, realworld experience, placement support and access to a robust network of alumni professionals.
GRADUATING AS COO
Tanvi Mittal is the chief operating officer of noVRel, the start-up she joined in 2023 while she was still a student majoring in mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering. The company is bringing augmented reality into the operating room with an AR headset they developed that integrates smart headlights, virtual magnification loupes, and a fluorescence guided surgery microscope. Her student team won second place in Carnegie Mellon’s McGinnis Venture Competition in 2025.
In a recent survey, our junior and senior students told us what they have done as Carnegie Mellon Engineering students, and what they plan to do with the incredible prospects they will have as graduates.
Here’s what they told us they have done: have been involved with research projects or plan to before they graduate have had a professional internship or plan to before they graduate studied abroad
BACK TO SCHOOL
OFF TO WORK
Before accepting a position as a Process Development Engineer at Lubrizol, a specialty chemical company near his home in Cleveland, Justin Croyle spent three summers working as an intern for the company.
The chemical engineering and material science and engineering student was a finalist for the Engineers’ Society of Western Pennsylvania’s George Washington Prize, and his ChemE Cube team won first place at the American Institute of Chemical Engineer’s collegiate competition.
While studying material science and engineering and engineering and public policy, Katie Eisenman conducted research at Purdue University and the University of Sheffield. She was vice president of the Society of Women Engineers, performed with the Tartan Wind Ensemble, and won the 2025 George Washington Prize from the Engineers’ Society of Western Pennsylvania. The accomplished graduate is now pursuing her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University, a leading institution in the field.
Here’s what they plan to do as graduates:
BACK TO SCHOOL
of our undergraduate students want to pursue a master’s degree want to earn a Ph.D. off to work
WILL BEGIN THEIR CAREERS
plan to pursue a job as soon as they graduate have entrepreneurial ambitions to start or join a new venture say they are still unsure