Established in 1885
Location: Manufacturing Related
Disciplines Complex (MRDC)
Administrative Office: 404.894.3200
Undergraduate Office: 404.894.3203
Graduate Office: 404.894.3204
Fax: 404.385.4545
Web site: www.me.gatech.edu

General Information

Mechanical engineering (ME) was the first academic program established at Georgia Tech. On September 20, 1985, the School of Mechanical Engineering celebrated its centennial by assuming the name of one of its most distinguished alumni, Atlanta businessman and philanthropist George W. Woodruff (Class of 1917). Today, the Woodruff School offers undergraduate degrees in mechanial engineering and nuclear and radiological engineering and graduate degrees in mechanical engineering, nuclear and radiological engineering, medical physics, bioengineering, and paper science and engineering.

Mechanical engineering traditionally deals with diverse engineering problems. Because of its general nature, mechanical engineering encourages a number of multidisciplinary activities to be conveniently organized within it. Mechanical engineering embraces the generation, conversion, transmission, and utilization of thermal and mechanical energy; the design and production of tools and machines and their products; the consideration of fundamental characteristics of materials as applied to design; and the synthesis and analysis of mechanical, thermal, and fluid systems, including the automation of such systems. Design, production, manufacture, operation, administration, economics, and research are functional aspects of mechanical engineering.

Nuclear and radiological engineering and medical physics are based on a symbiotic group of related areas of knowledge of a common set of science, engineering, and mathematical disciplines and their applications to the development of nuclear power and the utilization of radiation in industry and medicine. Nuclear engineering encompasses the disciplines of applied nuclear, neutron and plasma physics, radiation transport and interaction with matter, applied mathematics and computations, thermal and materials sciences, chemical processing, etc. and their applications to nuclear reactor development, operation, safety and fuel cycle, and to fusion reactor plasma research and technology development. Radiological engineering encompasses radiation production, transport, interaction with matter, detection, shielding and protection in nuclear power plants, industry and medicine.

Medical physics encompasses the therapeutic and diagnostic applications of radiation in medicine. It involves the application of physical principles to medicine, particularly in the diagnosis and treatment of human diseases. Medical physics includes diagnostic radiology, the diagnosis of disease with X-rays, ultrasound, and magnetic resonance imaging; health physics, the study of radiation hazards and radiation protection; nuclear medicine, the diagnosis and treatment of diseases with injected radio-pharmaceuticals; and radiation oncology, the treatment of cancer by ionizing radiation.