#12
for undergraduate programs among the country's public engineering schools
#10
program for graduate-level engineering among U.S.
public institutions
#15
online engineering graduate program in the U.S., and
#16 for veterans
When an innovator wanted to engineer a more advanced and equitable society, he chose a research and education powerhouse with global impact, and came to Maryland. The University of Maryland named Samuel Graham, Jr. dean of Maryland Engineering, effective October 1. Graham previously served as Eugene C. Gwaltney, Jr. Chair of the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
New Building for Autonomous Systems, Robotics Innovation
The new Southern Maryland Autonomous Research and Technology (SMART) Building includes the Maryland Autonomous Technology Research and Innovation Xploration (MATRIX) Lab, which features an open air-land lab with an amphibious pool, hydrology lab featuring a circulating water channel, AR/VR-capable research space, a rooftop antenna farm, and outdoor ground and air vehicle testing.
Professor Peter Sunderland's current research involves leading one and co-investigating two other experiments aboard the International Space Station. While they individually cover a wide range of questions and potential future applications, the projects all have one essential purpose: to build a more complete picture of how fire and flames behave—from an engineer’s perspective.
Shelby Bensi, Gregg Duncan, Katrina Groth, Katharina Maisel, Taylor Woehl, Chen Zhang, and You Zhou are recipients of CAREER grants, the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.
For four decades, the Center for Minorities in Science and Engineering (CMSE) at the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering has changed the odds for thousands of students. Its mission is transformative: create a culture in which all students, regardless of how they look or where they come from, have access to the resources and opportunities they need to succeed.
The UMD Loop student team walked away from Elon Musk's Not-a-Boring Competition in Las Vegas among the top four finishers and hoisting the safety award. UMD was one of only 12 teams—from an international pool of nearly 400 applicants—to be selected for the competition, which aims to help spur tunneling innovations that can reduce cost, increase speed, and ultimately facilitate advanced transportation options.
IonQ, a quantum computing company headquartered in College Park’s Discovery District and spun off from research at the University of Maryland, went public on the New York Stock Exchange in October. IonQ is a leading competitor in the effort to bring practical quantum computers to market that could leverage certain aspects of quantum physics to solve problems beyond the scope of present-day machines.
Maryland Engineering students took top spots for both the graduate and undergraduate categories in the 2020-2021 Vertical Flight Society’s (VFS) Student Design Competition. The competition required students to develop an unmanned vertical lift concept that could deliver, at high speed, up to 50 kg (110 lb.) payloads to end-user customer sites up to a 50 km (31 mile) radius, and to logistics centers up to 200 km (124 miles) away.
A team of researchers from the University of Maryland has 3D printed a soft robotic hand that is agile enough to play Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros.—and win!

The feat, highlighted on the front cover of Science Advances, demonstrates a promising innovation in the field of “soft robotics”, which centers on creating new types of flexible, inflatable robots that are powered using water or air rather than electricity. Soft robots’ inherent safety and adaptability has sparked interest in their use for applications like prosthetics and biomedical devices. Unfortunately, controlling the fluids that make these soft robots bend and move has been especially difficult—until now.