Materials Processing and Manufacturing Institute (MPMI)

The Materials Processing & Manufacturing Institute (MPMI) at MIT is an innovative partnership between academia and industry designed to address common needs in engineering education and research. The practice-oriented graduate degree program offered through the MPMI has a twofold purpose: it educates engineers to work in today's complex processing and manufacturing environments, and it contributes to the development of new and improved manufacturing processes directly related to industrial needs. A key feature of the MPMI is university-industry collaboration, with respect to both the educational and the research components of the program.

The educational program of the MPMI is designed to provide students from MIT's School of Engineering with practical industrial experience along with the traditional graduate engineering education for which MIT has become so well known. The 15-month master's degree program combines on-campus coursework with on-site industrial research, including a thesis to be written either at the sponsor company or at MIT. Students and faculty benefit from direct exposure to industrial technologies, modern commercial methods of materials processing and manufacturing, and complex organizational issues of manufacturing firms.

The program for the development of new, improved manufacturing processes will combine MIT's historic strengths in the conception and design of novel technologies with those of industry in delineating needs and in scaling to practice. Novel processes and products developed at MIT are more rapidly and more effectively introduced into industrial operations when MIT students work in conjunction with industry in scaling the new technology to the factory floor.

Some goals of the MPMI include:

(*) Providing graduate engineering students with practical R&D experience in an industrial environment.
(*) Providing advanced engineering education for engineers currently working in industry.
(*) Immersing students in interdisciplinary projects involving teamwork.
(*) Exposing students to extensive and larger-scale processing facilities not generally available on the MIT campus.
(*) Fostering closer interaction between MIT and industry.
(*) Providing practice-oriented, professional engineering graduate education for domestic students interested in a career in manufacturing.

Some benefits to industrial participants in the MPMI include:
(*) Opportunity to enhance the skills of existing engineering workforce with minimal leave time.
(*) High quality, reasonable-cost engineering talent directed at specific company problems.
(*) Opportunity to have MIT students and their faculty advisors work on proprietary company projects.
(*) No long-term employment commitment.
(*) Opportunity to review and recruit new hires for one year in the company environment.
(*) MIT faculty and students brainstorming on company problems.

The Materials Processing and Manufacturing Institute is a joint venture of the Materials Processing Center and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. An Advisory Board including representatives of participating companies exists to review and recommend curricula and to provide advice concerning overall program direction. Thesis supervision is the responsibility of the MIT-industry thesis supervisors. Overall academic responsibility (subjects, degree requirements, etc.) rests with the Departmental Graduate Committee.