The College of Engineering has over 70 tenured / tenure-track faculty performing research focusing on solving the most pressing local and global challenges. Their nationally and internationally recognized research expertise encompasses areas such as coastal resiliency, materials for extreme environments, nanotechnology, robotics, underwater exploration, offshore wind energy, and water reuse, among others, using an interdisciplinary and user-oriented approach to integrate the discovery of fundamental knowledge and applied research to solve societal issues.
The College of Engineering hosts three research centers funded by federal, state, and private sources and two research core facilities with more than $10M on state-of-the-art characterization and analytical capabilities.
Over the past 5 years, the College of Engineering has received 6 NSF CAREER Awards (60% of all URI NSF CAREER) and 4 ONR Young Investigator Awards. Our faculty’s research activity thrives thanks to the extensive collaboration across engineering disciplines, the university at large, government, academia, and industry worldwide.
This has resulted in a doubling of external research funding from 2016 to 2022, from $6M to $18M. A $150M investment in the Fascitelli Center for Advance Engineering (opened in 2019) and the recent approval of state bond to build the new Ocean Engineering building at the Bay Campus is giving URI Engineering some of the best engineering facilities in the country.
News in Research
Offshore wind turbines not cause of whale strandings, deaths, says URI ocean engineering professor - James Miller, University of Rhode Island professor of ocean engineering and department chair, answered several questions recently about whether wind turbines have an effect on whale safety and health.
The van Beuren Charitable Foundation Awards $3 Million to URI - March 13, 2023 – The van Beuren Charitable Foundation has generously awarded the University of Rhode Island a $3 million grant to support the development of a new Ocean Engineering Complex on the URI Narragansett Bay Campus (NBC) that will propel the development of the region’s blue economy.
NSF Awards Grant to Study Energy Grid Security Hardware - Professor Hui Lin, along with a partner from the University of Arkansas, has been awarded a three-year, $280,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Lin’s work has been focused on ways to defend the nation’s power grids from cyber-attacks. The idea came from the 2014 cyber-attack that shut down a Ukrainian power plant. “We’re […]
URI Blue MBA Student Christine De Silva and Assistant Professor Brennan Philips Build Startup - De Silva is chief executive officer of a small oceanography technology company in Rhode Island, a student at the University of Rhode Island’s Blue MBA program, and began filming deep sea sharks on Monday in South Africa for the Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week.”