WVU Department of Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering

08/15/2026

The WVU Department of Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering is hiring tenure-track faculty, and this is a good moment to join us. WVU is an R1 university under new leadership, with President Benson and Provost Wendland setting an explicit ambition to reach AAU membership.

Undergraduates in the department are up nearly 30% since 2023 with enrollment approaching 700 students in major and an additional 240 registered incoming freshman intending to join one of our programs. The department’s faculty-led research expenditures have grown 170% in 5 years and have exceeded $18 million for the past two years. We recently launched a BS in Robotics Engineering with our computer science and electrical engineering colleagues.

Our students win. Nine national or international robotics competition titles since 2011, $900K in NASA Centennial Challenges prize money, two first place finishes in the 30,000 ft SRAD category at the Spaceport America Cup, and numerous international ranked finishes across many engineering competitions.

We are recruiting at the Assistant or Associate Professor rank for a Mechanical Engineering faculty to complement our strengths in robotics, energy systems, and materials science. Morgantown sits inside a federal research corridor with NETL, NASA IV&V, NIOSH, and the FBI, ninety minutes from Pittsburgh, in a town people move to and then stay in.

Review of applications begins in one month on September 15. If you are on the market this cycle, or you know a PhD or postdoc who should be, send them my way. Please help us by liking and sharing with your network!

https://wvu.taleo.net/careersection/faculty/jobdetail.ftl?job=29633&tz=GMT-04%3A00&tzname=America%2FNew_York

08/11/2026

08/08/2026

West Virginia University researchers are developing an AI-powered satellite system designed to detect early-stage wildfires and autonomously track them from space before they spread.

See how the satellites work in the comments

07/15/2026

Great feature on the exciting work in Prof. Hang Woon Lee’s lab by Aerospace PhD student Brycen Pearl. Brycen was recently named a recipient of our department’s PhD student researcher of the year. Learn more about their high impact work on using satellite constellations to track wildfires.

A new artificial intelligence system developed by West Virginia University engineers could help firefighters respond to wildfires sooner by enabling satellites to detect blazes and automatically adjust their positions for continued monitoring.

07/09/2026

Fun day for many WVU Formula SAE Mechanical Engineering students to showcase their success and have President Benson drive their designed, internationally competed car.

06/25/2026

Check out this feature article about Assistant Professor Anand Mishra’s recently published work and the Robiotics Lab he has established in the department.

06/18/2026

WVU Statler College graduate Jason Gibson turned curiosity, research and a willingness to explore new paths into national recognition on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

What began as an interest in aerospace engineering grew into interdisciplinary research, computational materials science and the launch of Quantum Formatics, a company built on the work he first explored as a student.

Read more about his journey: https://media.statler.wvu.edu/news/2026/06/18/wvu-graduate-turns-curiosity-and-research-into-a-path-to-forbes-30-under-30

06/11/2026

The WVU Department of Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering in the WVU Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources is hiring a new tenure-track Mechanical Engineering faculty member. Our department's research strengths within mechanical engineering span across energy, materials science, and robotics.

Come join us in a growing department at a flagship, land-grant, R1 University with AAU aspirations. Our department is engaged in more than $20M in annual external research funding annually, is ranked 64th nationally in the most NSF HERD survey for the mechanical engineering area, has experienced a 25 percent growth in mechanical engineering majors since 2023, and has supported 15 student teams to place in various in national and international engineering design competitions in the past 5 years.

We will begin reviewing applications at the start of the next academic year in September 2026. Reach out to learn more. Please helps us by liking and sharing this post.



https://wvu.taleo.net/careersection/faculty/jobdetail.ftl?job=29633&tz=GMT-04%3A00&tzname=America%2FNew_York