Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
Northeastern University College of Engineering
professor holding mechanical design component

Research

The Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) has a vibrant research environment motivated by our dedicated faculty. Our research programs are funded by many government agencies. In addition to the government, working with academia and industry is part of our focus. We have established large-scale collaborations with government agencies and industry including Rogers Corporation and Dow Chemical, Army Research Laboratory, and Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems.

Research activities at the department can be classified by research areas and by research centers. The department is focused within twelve disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and trans-disciplinary research themes strengthened by the wide range of MIE faculty expertise. Department faculty are leveraging Northeastern’s global network and Institutes to build strong research partnerships, these include the Kostas Research Institute for Homeland Security – Burlington, MA, Roux Institute – Portland, MA, Institute for Experiential Robotics, Network Science Institute, Institute for Experiential AI, and Global Resilience Institute.  The department also leads two research centers, including the Center for High Rate Nanomanufacturing and the Healthcare Systems Engineering Institute, both federally funded.

View faculty profiles to learn about their research, including work being conducted in their laboratories. Also, view our Annual Reports.

Recent News

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Image for Patent for Predicting Hard Disk Drive Failures Using Machine Learning and SMART Attributes
Faculty

Patent for Predicting Hard Disk Drive Failures Using Machine Learning and SMART Attributes

MIE Professor Sagar Kamarthi was awarded a patent for “Hard disk drive failure prediction method.”

Image for Ergun Receives Best Transportation Science Paper Award
Faculty

Ergun Receives Best Transportation Science Paper Award

MIE Distinguished Professor Ozlem Ergun’s paper “Multimodal Transportation Pricing Alliance Design: Large-Scale Optimization for Rapid Gains,” written with Kayla Spring Reyes Kummerlowe, Vikrant Vaze, and Cynthia Barnhart was selected by the Transportation Science (INFORMS flagship journal on transportation and logistics) editorial board to receive the journal’s Paper of the Year Award for 2025 in Modes and Industries.

Image for Sulfur Integration Unlocks Faster Ion Transport for Solid-State Sodium Batteries
Faculty

Sulfur Integration Unlocks Faster Ion Transport for Solid-State Sodium Batteries

Led by MIE Associate Professor Hongli Zhu, researchers published a new study in ACS Nano titled “Sulfur-Induced Local Structure Reconstruction and Fast Ion Transport in Solid-State Sodium Batteries,” which shows how sulfur incorporation changes the local structure of a solid electrolyte and helps sodium ions move more readily.

Image for Zhu Featured on Cover of Experimental Mechanics
Faculty

Zhu Featured on Cover of Experimental Mechanics

MIE Assistant Professor Juner Zhu’s research on “Core Collapse Instability of Spirally Wound Jelly-Roll Lithium-Ion Batteries” was featured on the cover of a special issue of “Recent Progress in Chemomechanics” of Experimental Mechanics.