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Detailed Information

Programs of Study

The College of Engineering offers Master of Science, Master of Engineering, Engineer, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in aerospace engineering, agricultural and biological engineering, biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, civil engineering, coastal and oceanographic engineering, computer and information science and engineering, electrical and computer engineering, environmental engineering sciences, industrial and systems engineering, materials science and engineering, mechanical engineering, and nuclear engineering sciences. A Master of Civil Engineering professional degree is also offered. The Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering also offers a Master of Science degree in digital arts and sciences. Several departments offer the opportunity for a five-year combined Bachelor of Science/Master of Science program. The Department of Materials Science and Engineering also offers a joint M.D./Ph.D. program in biomaterials. Master of Science, Master of Engineering, and Ph.D. degrees in engineering management are offered by the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering in conjunction with the College of Business Administration. The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences, and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering offer a joint master’s degree program with the College of Law. A joint program in health physics is offered between the Departments of Environmental Engineering Sciences and Nuclear and Radiological Engineering. With assistance from the medical school, Nuclear and Radiological Engineering also offers a graduate program in medical physics. The University operates on a schedule of two semesters plus two summer terms. Graduate courses are offered all year.

A minimum of 30 semester hours is required for the M.S. or M.E. with thesis, 6 of which represent work on the thesis. The nonthesis M.S. or M.E. requires 30 semester hours of course work. (An accredited bachelor’s degree in engineering or its equivalent is a prerequisite for the M.E.) The Engineer degree requires 30 hours beyond the master’s, with an optional thesis. The Ph.D. degree requires 90 credit hours (including dissertation) beyond the bachelor’s; beyond the first 30 credits counted toward the Ph.D. degree, 30 must be completed while enrolled at the University of Florida campus or the Research and Engineering Education Facility. The language requirement for the Ph.D. degree varies by department.

With eleven engineering departments and many programs in cooperation with more than twenty other University colleges and schools, including the large on-campus health science center, the opportunities for interdisciplinary research are numerous. The College ranks among the top twenty public U.S. engineering colleges in research funding.

Research Facilities

The College currently conducts about $106 million per year in research and has extensive research laboratories in a broad range of disciplines in modern buildings. The Engineering and Industrial Experiment Station, the research arm of the College, is well recognized nationally and internationally for the quality and breadth of its programs, and faculty members are at the forefront of their fields. The College of Engineering and the University have extensive computational facilities, including parallel processing, computer graphics, and minicomputer and personal computer laboratories. The library system consists of several major units, including a modern science and engineering library. The library includes 4.1 million volumes and more than 7.7 million microforms.

Financial Aid

Nearly 1,200 graduate assistantships with competitive stipends are available in research and teaching for one-fourth to three-fourths-time work loads. There are also traineeships and fellowships that provide from $4000 to $30,000 and are supported by NSF, NIH, NDEA Title IV, NANT, USDOE, NASA, the University of Florida Graduate School, and the College of Engineering.

Cost of Study

The registration fee for most graduate course work is $394.85 per credit hour for Florida residents and $1119.57 per credit hour for out-of-state students in 2009–10. Fee waivers are available for all graduate assistantships.

Living and Housing Costs

The University operates six apartment villages for graduate and married students. The monthly rental rates for housing range from $400 to $635 per student in 2009–10. Privately owned rooms and apartments are readily available.

Student Group

The total enrollment at the University for the fall semester 2008 was 52,112, including 11,756 graduate students and 4,458 professional students. The College of Engineering graduate enrollment is more than 2,600. The percentages of men and women in the College for graduate programs are 79 percent and 21 percent, respectively. Sixty-one percent of the College enrollment is international.

Student Outcomes

Employment opportunities for graduates are available in a variety of government agencies, consulting firms, and businesses in a variety of industries. A wide variety of employers recruit each year at the University of Florida. A sample of recent employers includes ABB, Accenture, Agilis, AMD, Bechtel, Boeing, Camp Dresser & McKee, Cargill, CH2M Hill, Citrix Systems, Dow Chemical, Entergy, ExxonMobil, Ford Motor Company, General Electric, Harris Corporation, Honeywell, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson Company, Kimley-Horn, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Milliken & Company, Motorola, NASA, Naval Undersea Warfare, Nortel Networks, NSA, Oracle, Pratt & Whitney, Procter & Gamble, Raytheon, Sandia Laboratories, Schlumberger, Siemens and Siemens-Westinghouse, Southwestern Research Labs, and Texas Instruments.

Location

The University of Florida is located in Gainesville, a city of approximately 111,000, situated in north-central Florida. Gainesville lies midway between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, each of which is within a 2-hour drive. A University golf course is adjacent to the campus, and there are opportunities for swimming and boating at nearby lakes, springs, and rivers. Gainesville is served by several airlines and bus lines and is located along I-75, 1 hour south of I-10 and 2 hours north of Orlando.

The University

A combined state university and land-grant college, the University of Florida has sixteen colleges, including four professional colleges (Dentistry, Law, Medicine, and Veterinary Medicine). The College of Engineering consists of eleven degree-granting departments occupying seventeen buildings and has 283 tenured or tenure-track, full-time faculty members. The University of Florida is a member of the Association of American Universities.

Applying

Application forms may be obtained from the director of admissions. A baccalaureate degree from an accredited college and an average grade of B or better for the junior and senior years are generally required. All students must submit satisfactory scores on the verbal, quantitative, and analytical portions of the General Test of the Graduate Record Examinations for admission to the Graduate School. Applications and transcripts should be submitted up to one year but not later than sixty days before registration; students may be admitted for any semester.

Faculty Heads and Research

• Agricultural and Biological Engineering. Professor Dorota Haman, Chair. A broad and active research program emphasizes engineering solutions to problems associated with biological and agricultural systems, often related to renewable natural resources. Areas of study and research include irrigation and drainage, water quality, hydrology and hydrologic modeling, plant biotechnology, systems analysis, robotics and machinery design, food engineering, bioprocessing and biofuels, ecological and risk modeling, remote sensing, geographic information systems, environmental biotechnology, postharvest technology, structures, environmental control, ecological restoration, environmental decision analysis, space agriculture, nonpoint pollution control, mathematical modeling of plant and animal systems and response of these systems to climate change, information technology/systems, waste management, precision agriculture, and packaging. The program features state-of-the-art facilities and a diverse, internationally recognized 32-member faculty. Web site: http://www.agen.ufl.edu
• Biomedical Engineering. Professor Bruce Wheeler, Interim Chair. The department offers graduate instruction and research opportunities in several interdisciplinary areas: neural engineering (signal processing, epilepsy control, neural culture interfacing, intracellular signaling, and stem cells), optical imaging (breast cancer and other cancer model systems), electrical impedance monitoring, instrumentation, and tissue engineering. Affiliates, with whom students may choose to interact, offer a wide variety of research (computational, imaging, materials, and microfabrication). The department is newly housed in the Biomedical Sciences Building on the medical college campus, providing tremendous opportunity for translational research. Web site: http://www.bme.ufl.edu
• Chemical Engineering. Professor Richard Dickinson, Chair. Graduate study and research emphasize the chemical engineering sciences of transport phenomena, thermodynamics and phase equilibria, chemical kinetics and reaction engineering, biological science, and process analysis and control. The department’s 23 faculty members provide a broad base of research areas for graduate student selection. Areas of fundamentals application are nanotechnology, energy technology, pharmaceutical processing, reactive transport, solid-state devices, bioengineering, advanced materials, interfacial phenomena, and complex fluids. Interdisciplinary research is conducted in many other areas, including electrochemical engineering, microelectronics, tissue engineering, particle science and technology, solar cells, polymer processing, and cellular engineering. Additional research options include biotechnology, biochemical reaction engineering, catalysis, molecular simulations, colloid physics, applied mathematics, and thin-film deposition. The department is housed in its own building and equipped with a wide range of diagnostic and processing equipment. Web site: http://www.che.ufl.edu
• Civil and Coastal Engineering. Professor Kirk Hatfield, Interim Chair. The research program comprises five major academic program areas: coastal and water resources, including geosensing; construction engineering; geosystems, materials, and pavements; structures and structural mechanics; and transportation systems engineering. These groups address a broad range of interdisciplinary research activities that generally fall into one of the following research focus areas: mitigation of extreme load events; high performance infrastructure and materials; water resources preservation; and beach and estuarine preservation. Representative current research activities include: extreme event load characterization and structural performance; microstructural and fracture behavior of composite infrastructure materials; remote sensing systems for ecohydrology to characterize surface water resources; nondestructive testing for automated quality assessment; intelligent transportation systems for pedestrian safety; and hurricane storm surge modeling. Excellent experimental and computational research facilities are available including: large-scale facilities for hydraulic model studies with several wave tanks; field equipment for coastal monitoring studies, including several boats and a wide range of monitoring instruments; two geotechnical centrifuges and a full spectrum of in-situ soil testing equipment; an advanced materials characterization laboratory with numerous servo-hydraulic loading frames; an environmental scanning electron microscope and laser interferometry system; airborne laser swatch mapping technology, including airplane; and a structural strong floor and strong wall for multi-axial, large-scale structures testing. Web site: http://www.ce.ufl.edu
• Computer and Information Science and Engineering. Professor Sartaj K. Sahni, Chair. Graduate research is in theoretical and applied areas of computer science, computer engineering, information science, and information engineering, specifically, computer graphics, modeling and art, computer vision and visualization, database and information systems, software engineering, parallel and distributed computing systems, high-performance computing, computer networking, computer communications, artificial intelligence, computer algorithms, simulation, management information systems, wireless and mobile computing, pervasive computing, bioinformatics, security, medical applications, land mine detection, and other areas. Students have access to approximately 300 state-of-the-art workstations/PCs and a 16-processor parallel server. Students can also access a high-performance supercomputer at the University of Florida with over 4 teraflops of computing power and several terabytes of disk space. The campus research network is connected to Florida LambdaRail and National LambdaRail by a 10Gb/s network. The department houses several labs including mobile computing, bioinformatics, multimedia, virtual reality, simulation, computer vision, computer networks, databases, and pervasive computing. Web site: http://www.cise.ufl.edu
• Electrical and Computer Engineering. Professor Mark Law, Chair. The five major research divisions are computer engineering, device and physical electronics, systems and signals, electromagnetics, and electronic circuits. The research facilities include laboratories devoted to IC processing, VLSI circuits, MEMs, high-performance computing and networking, lightning, communication systems, neural systems, and others. Research computing facilities are excellent and include clusters, workstations, PCs, and extensive industrial software. Teaching facilities include UNIX workstations and Pentium PCs. Computers are networked to other University computing resources and to national and international networks. Web site: http://www.ece.ufl.edu
• Environmental Engineering Sciences. Professor Paul Chadik, Chair. The areas of concentration are air resources, biogeochemical systems, ecological systems, solid and hazardous waste management, water resources, water supply, wastewater and stormwater systems, and environmental nanotechnology, directed by a multidisciplinary 18-member faculty. Adjacent research and teaching facilities contain 50,000 square feet of space to support these activities. The NASA Environmental Systems Commercial Space Technology Center, the Center for Wetlands, and the Center for Environmental Policy are associated with the department. Web site: http://www.ees.ufl.edu
• Industrial and Systems Engineering. Professor Joseph Hartman, Chair. Master’s degree work emphasizes engineering management, manufacturing and logistics systems engineering, operations research, and engineering economics. The engineering management program is offered in conjunction with the College of Business Administration. Ph.D. concentrations include operations research and optimization with applications in supply chain management, transportation logistics, financial engineering, risk management, health care, medicine, and energy systems. Extensive computing resources are available in computing laboratories and the Center for Applied Optimization. Web site: http://www.ise.ufl.edu
• Materials Science and Engineering. Professor Kevin S. Jones, Chair. Research programs emphasize processing, modeling, properties, structure, and relationship in order to optimize materials. Special emphasis is placed on new materials addressing the energy challenge as well as biomaterials for health-care challenges. Research is conducted on biomaterials, ceramics, composites, electronic materials, semiconductors, glasses, metals, polymers, colloid and interfacial chemistry, composites, corrosion, crystal growth, semiconductor processing, fracture, grain boundaries and interfaces, ion implantation, laser processing, mechanical behavior, metals and minerals processing, molecular beam epitaxy, spintronics, optical properties, optoelectronics, organic electronics, solid oxide fuel cells, organic photovoltaics, piezoelectric materials, pyrochlores, nuclear fuels, prosthetic materials, dental biomaterials, nanotribology, solidification, sol-gel processing, solidification, stereology, surface characterization, and thin films. Analytical facilities include AFM/STM, AES, EMP, ESCA, SEM, STEM, TEM, HREM, XPS, FIB, Nanoindentor, HRXRD, and other X-ray equipment. The faculty is internationally recognized, and the graduate program is ranked among the top ten programs in the country. Web site: http://www.mse.ufl.edu
• Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Professor S. “Bala” Balachandar, Chair. A wide variety of research opportunities is provided in three areas of specialization: Dynamics, Systems, and Control (DSC); Solid Mechanics, Design, and Manufacturing (SMDM); and Thermal Science and Fluid Dynamics (TSFD). Research activities include: (DSC) stability, dynamics, vibrations, and control applications in air/ocean/spacecrafts, acoustics, smart materials, manufacturing, robotics, autonomous vehicles, biomechanics, flow, MEMS; (SMDM) bone mechanics, composite materials, experimental and computational solid mechanics, engineering optimization, micro air vehicles, sensitive paints, computational methods in design, high-speed machining, precision metrology; and (TSFD) heat transfer, combustion, CFD, experimental fluid dynamics, multiphase flow, energy systems, fuel cells, HVAC, desalination, cavitation, propulsion, reusable launch vehicles, microfluidics.
• Facilities include high- and low-speed wind tunnels and a Cessna 172M for flight test engineering; and laboratories for biorheology and biomechanics; cell culture; Jarvik 7 artificial heart and ventricular assist devices; photomechanics; impact dynamics and wave propagation; fabrication of composite materials; combustion and propulsion; computational electromagnetic and solid mechanics; dynamics and control; smart structures and acoustics; robotics, automation, and manufacturing; structural and multidisciplinary optimization; experimental stress analysis; fuel cell; hydrogen solar energy and energy conversion; interdisciplinary microsystems; laser-based diagnostics; micro aerial vehicles; tribology; experimental fluid mechanics and aerodynamics; thermal pumping and gas separation; and computational thermo fluid dynamics. Departmental research centers and institutes include: the Institute for Future Space Transport, the Machine Tool Research Center, the Center for Intelligent Machines and Robotics, and the Interdisciplinary Center for Aeronomy and Atmospheric Sciences. The department has modern computational facilities, a complete machine shop, and instrumentation facilities that are staffed by professional and technical personnel. Web site://www.mae.ufl.edu
• Nuclear and Radiological Engineering. Professor Alireza Haghighat, Chair. Offers four graduate programs, including nuclear engineering, medical physics, and health physics. Areas of research include advanced nuclear fuel, with application to nuclear power reactors and space nuclear propulsion; advanced reactor design, with emphasis on generation IV reactors and space nuclear propulsion; high-performance computing methods for particle transport simulations for reactor physics and medical applications; medical application of radiation to areas of biological effects, diagnosis, and therapy; design of radiation detection devices for flaw detection; land mine detection; and radiation hardening for design of radiation resistive robots. Facilities include the Innovative Nuclear Space-power Propulsion Institute (INSPI) with ultrahigh-temperature fluid and materials lab, the University of Florida Training Reactor (UFTR) with associated analytical laboratory and neutron radiography facilities, the Particle Transport and Distributed Computing (PTDC) lab, a high-temperature diagnostic lab, a robotic lab, and different medical devices for radiation diagnosis and therapy. Web site: http://www.nre.ufl.edu

Correspondence and Information

University of Florida
Chairman, Department of (specify)
College of Engineering
Gainesville, Florida 32611
Telephone: 352-392-0946
Fax: 352-392-9673
Email: academics@eng.ufl.edu