The U.S. housing market is in crisis, due to a lack of affordable housing and a shortage of labor and materials to build them. Purdue University has a solution: NextHouse, an initiative to develop the next generation of factory-built housing.

It’s an age-old dilemma: students afraid to raise their hand or participate in class. Studies show that when participation drops, so do learning outcomes. The solution? An AI student who senses the awkward silence, uses large language models to initiate a question, and helps to break the ice on behalf of human students.

Purdue University’s nationally renowned motorsports engineering program has a new home. Dallara, the largest multinational Italian race car manufacturer, will house Purdue's motorsports program at their U.S. headquarters in Speedway, Indiana, just down the street from the iconic Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Purdue University continues its persistent pursuit of semiconductor excellence, by hosting a November 2024 symposium on the reliability of semiconductor packaging.

James Gibert has developed an apparatus to generate and measure gas breakdown during contact electrification — the process responsible for static electricity. Their findings, published in Nature Communications, offer insight into the potential and limitations of this type of electricity when harvested as an energy source for a variety of devices, including e-textiles, wearables, and smart packaging.

As we plan for future interplanetary spaceflight, one major aspect remains untested: refueling in space. That’s because most rocket propellants are cryogenic liquids whose long-term behavior in space is still unknown. Purdue University researchers are collaborating with NASA to study cryogenic liquids in zero gravity, leading to the possibility of propellant depots and refueling spacecraft in orbit.

Kejie Zhao, professor of mechanical engineering, has been selected by Purdue University's Office of the Provost as a University Faculty Scholar.

David Cappelleri, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, has been elected a Fellow of ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers).

Purdue offers multiple opportunities for ME graduate students to receive awards, grants, fellowships, and scholarships to reward their hard work and support their research moving forward. Below is a list of ME graduate students who have received these awards during the 2023-2024 academic year.

The future of electrified transportation isn’t just consumer vehicles. Tractor-trailers carry nearly 72% of the country’s freight, so innovations on that scale have the potential to make huge strides for sustainability worldwide. That’s why Purdue University researchers have teamed up with Wabash, the largest trailer manufacturer in the country, to investigate an experimental trailer that recaptures its own electricity from vibrations, heat, and airflow.