It is an honor to welcome you to the College of Engineering at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. In 2024, we celebrated 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 have received their BS/MS/MSE/or PhD degrees in engineering.
Let me first introduce myself, I joined UAH on August 5th 2026. Prior to coming here, I was the Department Head for Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at NC State from September 2017 to 2026. From 2007 to 2017, I was at Virginia Tech where I was holding positions of Associate Vice President for Research Programs, Rolls-Royce Commonwealth Professor for Aerospace Propulsion Systems, and Director of the Rolls-Royce University Technology Center for Advanced System Diagnostics. Prior to moving to Virginia Tech, I was an Associate and Assistant Professor at Louisiana State University. I received my B.Tech. from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University in Hyderabad, India, my MS from Arizona State University and PhD from Texas A&M University. Before embarking on my academic career, I spent 20 months working for Rolls-Royce in Indianapolis. I am very excited to be part of the Charger family.
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. Our students get to experience excellent education that provides them with an opportunity to develop, innovate, and design everything from robots to autonomous cars, to satellites, to prosthetic arms, to manufacturing methods, and to analyze and produce new novel engineering tools. The students are trained to think independently and to work in teams so to be successful in their future careers as engineers in the real world. As a college, the faculty are committed to the success of our students in all aspects of their educational experience here in UAH.
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. We have a highly accomplished faculty that are well known in their areas of research. Current faculty honors include 6 NSF CAREER awardees, 1 AIAA Fellow, 10 AIAA Associate Fellows, 3 IEEE Fellows, 2 AAAS Fellows, 1 APS Fellow, 7 ASME Fellows, 1 ASM Fellow, and 1 SPIE Fellow. 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. We also have several niche centers that are linked to the college. You can find the list at : https://www.uah.edu/eng/eng-research/research-centers.
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.
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), Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation at NC State. 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.
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!
Srinath Ekkad, P.h.D
Dean, College of Engineering