The graduate program of the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Northern Illinois University offers many opportunities for graduate assistantships, tuition waivers and job employments in the great Chicago and Rockford area.
All assistantships include full tuition waiver and monthly stipend that is more than enough for the living on campus. NIU is located in DeKalb which is close to Chicago (50 miles) and Rockford (30 miles). The Chicago/Rockford area is one of the largest manufacturing areas in the United States. It is home of hundreds of manufacturing companies including Caterpillar, Motorola, Hamilton-Sunstrand, Ingersoll, John-Deere, International Trucks and Lucent. It is also home of two national research laboratories: Argonne National Lab and Fermi Accelerator Lab. Many students take advantage of the prosperous local industry and work in companies during the summer, leading to full-time jobs after graduation.
Research projects cover many advanced topics including micro-machining, micro-forming, nano-technology, vibration and acoustics, fuel cell, advanced computing and simulation, finite-element analysis, multi-body dynamics, nonlinear control, robotics, walking machines, two-phase flow, computer data acquisition, HVAC, materials research and engineering education research.
The university offers the Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering and Ph.D. in Nano-Technology for engineering students. Nearly all of our graduates have received either very good job offers or assistantships for Ph.D. programs in top U.S. universities such as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Georgia Tech.
All applicants should apply as soon as possible (see www.niu.edu for application materials). Both spring and fall semesters are accepting applications. For more information about graduate study, please see our web site or send email to Linda Bauer at lbauer@ceet.niu.edu.