Where Students Go

Mechanical engineers design and develop machines to perform work, from bicycles to jetliners to space shuttles. Anything that involves the design and manufacturing of mechanical, thermal or electronic devices is encompassed by mechanical engineering. Such engineers work in the fields that support the entire spectrum of consumer products, including robotics, automotives, and packaging and transportation. They are playing a key role in efforts to develop nano-sized machines and ultimately, to enable industrial-scale nanomanufacturing. Mechanical engineers frequently work in areas that cross over into other disciplines, particularly biology and medicine. For example, mechanical engineers at Duke are helping to develop artificial tissue and organs, and novel treatments for cancer and biomedical imaging.

Today our graduates are working in every level of government, industry and academe. Alumni from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science are pursuing their careers at Boeing in St. Louis and Seattle; Duke University; Harvard University; McGill University in Montreal; NASA Ames in California; NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia; the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC; Pratt and Whitney Corporation in Hartford, Connecticut; the Science Magnet School in Birmingham, Alabama; Sun Microsystems in Palo Alto; Technology Modeling in Boston; University of Connecticut; University of Michigan; University of Pittsburgh; Washington State University; and Washington University in St. Louis, just to name a few of the many organizations where Duke graduates have found exciting opportunities for their life after Duke.

After Graduation Plans for 2011 Seniors