About UCL Mechanical Engineering
The department has been pioneering in the development of engineering education, having taught the core discipline for 170 years.
UCL was home to the UK’s first-ever Professor of the Mechanical Principles of Engineering, Eaton Hodgkinson, in 1847. It was also where Sir Alexander Blackie William Kennedy introduced organised laboratory practicals in university engineering training; a world-leading educational innovation at the time.
Diverse, world-leading research
Today our students are taught core engineering disciplines and supervised in individual and group research projects by academics that are recognised research world-leaders in their fields. In the latest Research Excellence Framework (REF 2014) over 90% of the department’s research was judged “world leading” or “internationally excellent”.
We develop and apply core competencies to produce world class research into a wider range of engineering challenges than most would imagine.
Amongst many other avenues, we are:
- leading research into low carbon shipping
- designing the greenest engines and novel sustainable fuels
- studying the flow of red blood cells in channels thinner than a human hair
- using ‘lighter than air’ building materials to develop the power stations of the future
- developing the most advanced brain models for Dementia
- designing propulsion systems for advanced multihull ships
Visit our research pages to see more about our work in the following engineering research areas: