Since 1951 the Department of Mechanical Engineering has been rated one of the top scientific institutions both at Italian and European level.? The Department of Mechanical Engineering has about one hundred members of the faculty, forty members of technical and administrative staff, sixty PhD students, as well as 120 people belonging to the temporary research staff.

With its state-of-the-art technological infrastructure and research facilities, broad theoretical, methodological and technological knowledge, international reputation and successful alumni, the overall mission of the Department of Mechanical Engineering is to deliver world-class research and education in Mechanical Engineering, with particular regard to their application in industrial sectors, such as energy, transportation, sustainable mobility and advanced manufacturing.

The Department’s research activity includes the areas of: system dynamics, road vehicles, product design, manufacturing technologies and production systems, measurements and products and materials development methods.

Basic research, applied research and innovation are thus key departmental activities. In fact, a network consisting of over 250 companies acts as a strategic partner for the development of research.Competitive research projects, as well as those related to product innovation and services, are developed, accounting for approximately EUR 7 million per year, 70% of which comes from the private industrial sector and 30% from public funding (National Ministries and European Community).

The Department believes that the excellence of its laboratories plays a key role in the quality of the research. The facilities in its laboratories are continuously enhanced through significant investments. Additionally, spin-off companies of the Politecnico di Milano were created for the technological transfer of the results of the research activity performed by the Department.

Basic research saw the involvement of the Department prevalently in Europe, with active participation in various Community programmes in all those border subjects in which the methodologies and technologies inherent in Mechanical Engineering can and must give their contribution to sectors such as sustainable mobility, energy efficiency, smart materials and virtualisation.

In this context the Department is involved in the provision of teaching programmes for the attainment of B.Sc, M.Sc and PhD degrees in all sectors of Industrial and Design Engineering.

The following words by Karl Fisch sum up the guidelines of the Department whose mission is teaching through the use of educational projects that combine the necessary methodological skills with suitable in-laboratory preparation: “We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist… using technologies that haven’t been invented… in order to solve problems that we don’t even know are problems yet.”