MIT School of Engineering

MIT School of Engineering

MIT Building 1 Pierce Engineering Laboratory
Established	1932
Dean	Paula T. Hammond
Location	Cambridge , Massachusetts , United States 42°21′32″N 71°05′33″W / 42.35896°N 71.09244°W / 42.35896; -71.09244
Website	engineering.mit.edu

The MIT School of Engineering (SoE) is one of the five schools of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. It was established in 1932 as part of the reorganization of the Institute recommended by President Karl Taylor Compton. SoE has eight academic departments and two interdisciplinary institutes. The School grants SB, MEng, SM, engineer's degrees, and PhD or ScD degrees. As of 2026, the Dean of Engineering is Professor Paula T. Hammond. The school is the largest at MIT as measured by undergraduate and graduate enrollments and faculty members.¹

The school includes eight departments:²

• Aeronautics and Astronautics (Course 16) (Founded 1939)
• Biological Engineering (Course 20) (Founded 1998)
• Chemical Engineering (Course 10) (Founded 1920)
• Civil and Environmental Engineering (Course 1) (Founded 1865)
• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Course 6, joint department with MIT Schwarzman College of Computing) (Founded 1902)
• Materials Science and Engineering (Course 3) (Founded 1884)
• Mechanical Engineering (Course 2) (Founded 1883)
• Nuclear Science and Engineering (Course 22) (Founded 1958)

In addition, the following MIT institutes are within the school:

• Institute for Data, Systems & Society
• Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (includes the Harvard–MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology)

Departments and degree programs are commonly referred to by course catalog numbers on campus.

The following labs and centers report to the Dean of Engineering:³

• Center for Transportation and Logistics
• Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation
• Microsystems Technology Laboratories
• MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab
• MIT Lincoln Laboratory Beaver Works Center
• MIT Sociotechnical Systems Research Center

Additional labs and centers which are in the School of Engineering include:

• Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems
• Center for Computational Engineering
• Center for Materials Science and Engineering
• Center for Ocean Engineering
• Industrial Performance Center
• Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity
• Ocean Engineering Design Laboratory

Other MIT labs and centers related to the School include:

• Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab
• Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies
• Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
• Materials Research Lab
• MIT Energy Initiative
• Plasma Science and Fusion Center
• Research Laboratory of Electronics
• SMART Center
• Tata Center for Technology and Design

The Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems were moved to the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing upon its creation, and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Institute for Data, Systems and Society are now administered jointly.

• Vannevar Bush 1931–1938
• Edward Leyburn Moreland 1938–1946
• Thomas Kilgore Sherwood 1946–1952
• Edward Lull Cochrane 1952–1954
• Carl Richard Söderberg 1954–1959
• Gordon Stanley Brown 1959–1968
• Raymond Lewis Bisplinghoff 1968–1971
• Alfred H. Keil 1971–1977
• James D. Bruce 1977–1978 (Acting Dean)
• Robert Seamans 1978–1981
• Gerald L. Wilson 1981–1991
• Joel Moses 1991–1995
• Robert A. Brown 1996–1999
• Thomas L. Magnanti 1999–2007
• Subra Suresh 2007–2009
• Cynthia Barnhart 2009–2011 (Acting Dean)
• Ian A. Waitz 2011-2017
• Anantha P. Chandrakasan 2017-2025
• Maria C. Yang 2025-2026 (Acting Dean)
• Paula T. Hammond 2026-present