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:

• Biomechanical 
• Energy and the Environment
• Marine
• Materials, Structures and Manufacturing