shankar mahalingam

It is an honor to welcome you to the College of Engineering at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. Next year, in 2024, we will celebrate 55 years since UAH became an independent campus within The University of Alabama (UA) System. Over this relatively short time period, over 13,000 UAH graduates received their BS/MS/MSE/or PhD degrees in engineering.

We are proud of each one of our alumni, and our message to aspiring students is that we hope to have the privilege to include them as members of our UAH Charger alumni family. Several outstanding graduates include Dr. Virginia Kobler (Industrial Engineering, 1979), our first woman PhD recipient who went on to serve as Division Chief at the US Army Strategic Defense Command, Dr. Jan Davis (Mechanical Engineering, 1985) who was a NASA Astronaut and served as VP for Jacobs Engineering, Dr. Marc Bendickson (Electrical Engineering, 1980), former CEO of Dynetics Inc., and Professor Krista Walton (BSChE, 2000), Associate VP for Research at Georgia Tech. Some of our more recent outstanding alumni include Emma Donnelly-Bullington (BSCE, 2019), Civil Engineering Analyst at Kimley-Horn, Nicholas Peterson (BSME, 2018), Senior Project Engineer at Cruise, Kareem Omar (BSAE, and BS, Physics, 2017), Senior Software Engineer at Space X, Michael Henry (BSME, 2014), Mergers and Acquisition Analyst at Hexagon, and Sunny Patel (BSCpE, 2015), Software Engineering Manager at Google.

Undergraduate engineering at UAH today includes eight ABET accredited programs including one of only four to date Cybersecurity Engineering program reviewed by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET. What makes our programs unique in the country is the incredible wealth of experiential learning opportunities in the form of a) coops and internships at numerous industrial and governmental organizations within just a few miles from campus, b) leadership and engineering-projects based opportunities within award-winning student clubs and organizations affiliated with the College, and c) undergraduate research opportunities with mentorship provided by our outstanding faculty.

Graduate Engineering at UAH offers opportunities in the form of teaching assistantships and research assistantships through contracts and grants awarded to our faculty principal and coprincipal investigators. Current faculty honors include 5 NSF CAREER awardees, 10 AIAA Associate Fellows, 3 IEEE Fellows, 1 AAAS Fellow, 1 APS Fellow, 6 ASME Fellows, 1 ASM Fellow, and 1 SPIE Fellow. In 2023, the US News and World Report (USNWR) ranking of graduate engineering programs ranked our College at 73, the highest ever ranking achieved. This is a significant testament to the outstanding research led by our College faculty in partnership with many academic units and research centers at UAH.

In 2022, the College of Engineering faculty, staff, students, and community stakeholders developed our strategic Flight Plan 2032: Engineer*Innovate*Impact that set our path forward. This plan is centered on student centered teaching and learning focused on student success, promoting basic and applied engineering research, while engaging the local and regional community through outreach and workforce development. It will serve as a guidepost in student-centric academic planning, staff and faculty hiring driven by research and curricular needs, and enhance our ability to make an even greater impact on our community.

I hope you enjoy browsing through our website and should your travels bring you to Huntsville, we would be delighted to see you at the College of Engineering at UAH.

Go Chargers!

Shankar Mahalingam

Dean

October 2023