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Fields of Study

Our fields of study are designed with this key aim in mind: innovation through specialization. Expertise is incredibly valuable in industry today, and by focusing your talents and efforts toward your passions, our program will prepare you for solving the most pressing problems in mechanical and industrial engineering and making your own research breakthroughs. We’ll give you the tools, facilities, mentors and access to industry opportunities you need. The ideas and vision are yours.

Abdallah Elsayed

“At Toronto Metropolitan University, my professors and supervisor constantly challenged me to think about how my work could have a positive impact on society and make a difference.”

Abdallah Elsayed, Assistant Professor at the University of Guelph
Mechanical Engineering, MASc ’10, PhD ’15

Nine Fields of Study to Choose From

Biomechanics is the application of mechanical principles to living organisms. This area includes bioengineering, research and analysis of the mechanics of living organisms, occupational biomechanics and the application of engineering principles to biological systems. Biomechanical research may be carried out at the molecular level or may involve the study of tissue and complex organs.

Research Areas:

  • Development and testing of novel glass-based bioactive coatings and adhesives
  • Effects of gender and age on bone fracture
  • Fatigue damage assessment of Haversian cortical bone under physiological loads
  • Minimizing shoulder load in light manual labour
  • Navigation and deformation of catheter in vascular artery

Data science is an interdisciplinary field that combines expertise from several academic areas such as statistics, math, computer science and operations research. Data science research revolves around data mining and big data with the objective of using powerful computing environments and efficient algorithms to solve practical problems. Accordingly, research in this field includes developing predictive/prescriptive models (for example, statistical/machine learning models), designing efficient algorithms and providing decision support systems.

Research Areas:

  • Decision-making under uncertainty by using Bayesian machine learning methods to analyze complex structures in data to build recommender systems and predictive models
  • Development of novel algorithms such as case-based reasoning systems, ensembles of neural networks, embeddings (tensor factorization, gradient boosted trees, ensembles) and models such as reinforcement learning, Bayesian networks and neural networks
  • Development of recommender systems based on Gaussian processes, nonparametric Bayesian methods, approximate inference algorithms, graphical models, Monte Carlo methods, supervised and unsupervised learning, and model comparison in an applied manner
  • Improving learning by using novel approaches such as measuring and quantifying cognitive biases and learning with internal and external information sources
  • Predictive and prescriptive analytics

Research Laboratories and Facilities:

Ergonomics, or human factors, is the scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a system, and the profession that applies theory, principles, data and methods to design in order to optimize human well-being and overall system performance.

Practitioners of ergonomics and ergonomists contribute to the design and evaluation of tasks, jobs, products, environments and systems in order to make them compatible with the needs, abilities and limitations of people.

Research Areas:

  • Organizational design and management
  • Process simulation and improvement
  • Work measurement

Research Laboratories and Facilities:

This field focuses on the processes, methods and technologies involved in manufacturing and materials, as well as their applications. You will learn to improve the processes, microstructures, properties and performance involved in developing advanced and critical engineering materials and manufacturing goods. 

Our labs are equipped with state-of-the-art materials and testing facilities, including scanning electron microscopes, X-ray diffractometers and a fatigue testing system. Industry demand for experts in this field is high, given the wide range of manufacturing in Canada and around the world. 

Research Areas:

  • Development, testing and application of lightweight alloys
  • Fatigue deformation of advanced and critical engineering materials
  • Integrity and reliability of welded joints using various techniques (ultrasonic spot welding, friction stir welding, laser welding and resistance spot welding)
  • Mechanical behaviour and modelling of nanomaterials and biomaterials
  • Metal matrix composites and ceramic matrix composites

Research Laboratories and Facilities:

Mechatronics, or mechanical and electronics engineering, is the synergistic combination of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, control engineering, systems design engineering and computer engineering to create smart machines. Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) is the technology of the very small, and it merges at the nanoscale into nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) and nanotechnology. It is often used in cutting-edge biomedical and industrial applications.

Research Areas:

  • Aerial robotic systems and aerial manipulation
  • Haptic interfaces
  • MEMS fabrication using abrasive jet machining and laser
  • MEMS materials, MEMS reliability and fatigue analysis
  • Microfluidics, nano-energy and nano-biosensors
  • Micro-robots, medical robots and image-guided robotic surgery
  • Microsensors and micro-actuators
  • Micro-systems and MEMS with a focus on micro-manipulation, optical MEMS and MOEMS
  • Nano-medicine for cancer diagnosis and therapy
  • Nano-systems and NEMS with a focus on ultrafast laser nano-fabrication and processing, and 3-D micro- and nano-structuring
  • Telerobotics and simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM)
  • Visual servo control of robots (visual servoing)

Research Laboratories and Facilities:

Operations research is a powerful approach to solving various types of complex problems. It can be employed in manufacturing systems, supply chains and service industries to reach superior decisions that maximize profit, improve efficiency, reduce cost or minimize risk.

Research Areas:

  • Financial issues in supply chains
  • Inventory and logistics management
  • Maintenance and spares optimization
  • Modelling human learning and forgetting processes
  • Physical asset management
  • Production planning and scheduling
  • Reliability, diagnostics and prognostics
  • Reverse logistics
  • Sustainable supply chains
  • Thermodynamic production economics

Research Laboratories and Facilities:

Solid mechanics is the study of the strength and behaviour of solid materials under the action of applied external loadings. Physics and other scientific approaches are used to research stress and strain, elasticity and plasticity, tension, torsion, fatigue, creep and more.

Research Areas:

  • Casting of materials
  • Characterization and analysis of materials and structures for mechanical and aerospace applications
  • Computational mechanics applied to such other areas as biomechanical devices
  • Creep and plasticity
  • Failure analysis and durability of load-bearing engineering components
  • Investigation into the vibrations and buckling of composite plates and shells
  • Modelling of material removal mechanisms due to high-speed solid particle impacts
  • Thermal stresses

Research Laboratories and Facilities:

This field focuses on the development of more efficient energy systems which have less impact on the environment. You will gain expertise in advanced computer simulation methods, such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and finite element methods. You will also learn experimental measurement techniques, such as laser interferometry, phase Doppler interferometry, laser-induced fluorescence, inverse methods and hot-wire anemometry.

Research Areas:

  • Advanced heating ventilation and air conditioning systems, ground coupled heat pumps, whole-building energy modelling, fenestration performance modelling, solar energy utilization and improved manufacturing processes
  • Characterization of turbulent and combusting flows, modelling of multiphase flow and heat transfer and measurement of diffusion coefficients under microgravity
  • Fluidized bed heat treatment, semiconductor crystal growth in microgravity, waste heat recovery, fundamental research in fluid mechanics and heat and mass transfer
  • Sustainable energy conversion systems such as improved fuel cell systems, solar energy applications, cogeneration and green building energy systems

Research Laboratories and Facilities:

This area of study focuses on the mechanics of vibration with an eye to producing more stable, resilient mechanisms that can exert a finer degree of control. This field finds applications for the scientific understanding of the dynamics of linear time-invariant systems, including basic concepts of linear dynamics of discrete systems, the dynamics of controlled structural systems and analysis of the dynamic behaviour of continuous systems using discretization techniques.

Research Areas:

  • Energy harvesting
  • Flow- and acoustics-induced vibration and wear and applications to components in nuclear power plants
  • Nonlinear dynamical systems, chaos and time series analysis
  • Nonlinear vibration
  • Vibration mitigation techniques

Research Laboratories and Facilities: