mechanical and aerospace engineering

William Nourse’s interest in machines inspired by nature took hold when he watched Jurassic Park as a child. The animatronic dinosaurs were Nourse’s earliest exposure to engineering. As an undergraduate student majoring in mechanical and aerospace engineering at Case Western Reserve University,…

CWRUbotix, Case Western Reserve University’s robotics team, won first place in the 2025 MATE ROV World Championship last month, beating 26 university teams from around the world that qualified in the Explorer class. Hosted in Alpena, Michigan, this competition challenged teams to deploy remotely…

CWRU Motorsports, the university’s Baja SAE team, had a record-breaking performance at the Arizona Baja SAE competition in May, earning first place in Design Presentation and first in the 4-hour-long Endurance race categories both first-time wins for the team. The team placed fourth overall out of…

VTOL CWRU, the university's student-led design team dedicated to advancing Vertical Takeoff & Landing (VTOL) technology through unmanned aircraft, recently competed in the 2025 Design-Build-Vertical Flight Competition. The team's mission was to build an aircraft for wildfire response and the…

Robert Gao, the Cady Staley Professor of Engineering and chair of Case Western Reserve University’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, has been selected to receive the 2025 SME Gold Medal in recognition of outstanding service to the manufacturing engineering profession in technical…

Jocelyn Schechter, a BS/MS student in aerospace engineering, was selected for the Ohio Space Grant Consortium Master’s Fellowship, which is administered by NASA. Awards to master’s students for the academic year are $23,400 in addition to tuition waivers. Fellows complete a STEM-related research…

Assistant Professor Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Growing up, Zach J. Patterson had a number of engineering role models in his life, most notably, his grandfather. Paired with an interest in math and science, pursuing a career in engineering made complete sense. As an assistant professor…

Umut Gurkan, Wilbert J. Austin Professor of Engineering, has co-authored a new publication by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Titled On Leading a Lab: Strengthening Scientific Leadership in Responsible Research, the work explores strategies for fostering ethical and…

Chirag Kharangate, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, was awarded the 2024 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Electronic & Photonic Packaging Division (EPPD) Early Career Engineer Award at this year’s ASME InterPACK Conference. “It is…

Chirag Kharangate, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, was awarded the 2024 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Electronic & Photonic Packaging Division (EPPD) Early Career Engineer Award at this year’s ASME InterPACK Conference. “It is an…