Purdue ME ranked number 2 in the country
Purdue University has the #2 mechanical engineering program in the country over the last five years, according to the world's most comprehensive scholarly analytics platform, ScholarGPS.
ScholarGPS includes detailed information pertaining to 30 million individual scholars at 120,000 institutions worldwide. They use machine learning algorithms and statistical analysis to offer unbiased, quantitative evaluation of academic institutions. According to their analysis, Purdue’s School of Mechanical Engineering is ranked #19 in the world, #7 in the United States lifetime, and #2 in the last five years — only MIT is ranked higher.
“This is an outstanding achievement for our school,” said Eckhard Groll, William E. and Florence E. Perry Head of Mechanical Engineering and Reilly Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering. “We are always striving to deliver the best educational experience in the country, and it’s gratifying to see that recognized by outside organizations.”
Bigger is Better
Purdue recently passed Georgia Tech to become the largest mechanical engineering school in the country. In the 2024-2025 school year, Purdue University enrolls 4,034 mechanical engineering students: 2,914 undergraduate students, and 1,120 graduate students. “Unlike MIT and Stanford, we are a land-grant school. It’s in our charter to open our doors wide and share our education with as many people as possible,” said Groll. “That’s particularly true of mechanical engineering — the flagship school at Purdue — which has the broadest application to so many areas of business, government, and research."
Highly Ranked Scholars
Beyond ranking institutions, ScholarGPS also quantifies the work of individual researchers. The most cited and significant individuals in their fields are highlighted as Highly Ranked Scholars. Purdue Mechanical Engineering faculty are well-represented in these lists:
- Issam Mudawar is the #3 scholar in the world for heat transfer, the #2 scholar for boiling, and the #1 scholar for heat sinks. Mudawar has long been one of the most highly-cited heat transfer researchers in the world.
- Andrea Vacca is the #3 scholar for fluid power. Vacca leads Maha Labs, the largest academic fluid power lab in the country.
- Steve Son is the #4 scholar lifetime in propellants. He conducts research at Zucrow Labs, the largest academic propulsion lab in the world.
- Yung Shin is the #6 ranked scholar for manufacturing, #8 for design, #20 for lasers, and #4 for machine tools. He conducts manufacturing research at the Manufacturing and Materials Research Laboratories (MMRL).
- Farshid Sadeghi is the #6 scholar lifetime in tribology.
- Bin Yao is the #11 ranked scholar lifetime in mechatornics, #8 for motion control, #1 for robust control.
- Babak Anasori is in the top 60 scholars for all of mechanical engineering over the last five years.
- Song Zhang is the #2 scholar for structured light.
- Guang Lin is the #3 scholar for computational physics in the last 5 years.
- Eckhard Groll is the #5 scholar for refrigeration.
- Xiaoping Du is #1 in survival analysis, #5 in uncertainty analysis, and #11 in reliability engineering.
ScholarGPS also recognizes the lifetime contributions of faculty who are no longer at Purdue. Jim Braun, who recently retired from Purdue, is the #1 scholar in the world for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (former Purdue ME faculty Yan Chen is #3). Monika Ivantysynova, the founder of Maha Labs, is the #1 scholar lifetime in the field of fluid power. Ray Viskanta, the #5 scholar lifetime in the field of heat transfer, taught at Purdue for 39 years.
“I am so proud of my colleagues in the Purdue ME faculty,” Groll said. “They undertake world-changing research every day, and this analysis shows how crucial their work is to the foundations of science worldwide — and more specifically to our students, alumni, and industry partners at Purdue.”
Many Metrics
For many years, U.S. News and World Report has served as the de facto standard for university rankings. Purdue has achieved a fair amount of success in the U.S. News lists; both graduate and undergraduate Mechanical Engineering programs have been ranked in the top 10 for more than 30 years running. Purdue ME’s Online Master’s has been ranked #1 in all six years of that particular ranking. But Groll is encouraged to see similar results from a diversity of objective sources.
“Ranking our colleagues at these great universities is an impossible task,” he said. “There are many nuances and layers to each program. For years we’ve relied solely on the U.S. News and World Report rankings, but it’s great that we now have many alternatives to help people make these decisions.”
The larger institution of Purdue University also has appeared in increasing numbers of rankings and lists from outside organizations. Here is a sampling from the past year:
- Fast Company cited Purdue as the only university in its Top 50 Most Innovative Companies, ahead of NASA and Disney.
- Purdue was named the Best Value university in Indiana, and one of the best in the nation, by the financial services portal SmartAsset.
- For the third consecutive year, Purdue ranks among U.S. universities with the highest number of faculty selected for the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program.
- According to the National Academy of Inventors, Purdue is #5 among U.S. universities for number of patents granted for the third year running.
- Purdue is the number 3 most recognized public university in the US, according to American Caldwell’s Global University Visibility rankings.
- The 2024 Times Higher Education World University Rankings ranked Purdue the No. 33 university in the U.S. and No. 86 worldwide.
- The QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) World University rankings list Purdue as the No. 27-ranked university in the U.S., No. 10 among U.S. public universities.
- Forbes put Purdue in its top 3 best large employers among U.S. universities, and 47th overall among all large employers in the country.
- Eight Purdue University researchers were named in Clarivate’s 2023 list of Highly Cited Researchers an indication of research excellence and influence.
- More notable Purdue rankings can be found here.
About Purdue University
Purdue University is a public research institution demonstrating excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities and with two colleges in the top four in the United States, Purdue discovers and disseminates knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 105,000 students study at Purdue across modalities and locations, including nearly 50,000 in person on the West Lafayette campus. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its first comprehensive urban campus in Indianapolis, the Mitch Daniels School of Business, Purdue Computes and the One Health initiative — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.
Writer: Jared Pike, jaredpike@purdue.edu, 765-496-0374