The College of Engineering is home to more than 75 faculty whose research tackles today’s most pressing local and global challenges. From coastal resiliency and offshore wind energy to robotics, nanotechnology, and water reuse, our faculty lead nationally and internationally recognized work that blends interdisciplinary discovery with user-driven, applied solutions to real-world problems.
Over the past two decades, the College of Engineering at the University of Rhode Island has received multiple CAREER Awards from the National Science Foundation. Faculty have also earned prestigious Young Investigator Awards from the Office of Naval Research and Young Faculty Awards from DARPA. These national honors reflect both the exceptional talent of our early-career faculty and the growing recognition of URI Engineering’s leadership in key research areas, including resilient infrastructure, advanced materials, AI and cybersecurity, robotics, biomedical technologies, and naval and marine engineering.
This momentum is backed by a dramatic rise in research activity. Since 2017, external research funding has had an eight time increase, driven by interdisciplinary collaboration with government, industry, and academic partners at the state, national, and global levels.
Research News
URI Biomedical Engineering Professor Receives NIH R01 Award - Associate professor and biomedical engineering acting chair at the University of Rhode Island Yalda Shahriari has received a $1.015 million R01 research grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop an innovative multimodal neurotechnology framework aimed at better understanding and enhancing the brain’s motor networks.- URI Hosting Biomedical Engineering Symposium Aug. 14 - The one day symposium, Advances in Translational Neurotechnologies for Healthcare and Rehabilitation Symposium, will bridge gap between academic discovery and real-world application.
Underwater ribbon cutting ushers in new URI Ocean Robotics Laboratory - KINGSTON, R.I. – June 26, 2026 – The University of Rhode Island celebrated a major milestone in the $300 million, multi-phase revitalization of the Narragansett Bay Campus with a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new Ocean Robotics Laboratory on June 25.