General News

On Friday, October 17, more than 100 high school students filled Duke Centennial Hall for Manufacturing Day 2025, an immersive, career exploration tour. This four-hour event directly connected students with hands-on learning, advanced technological demonstrations and networking possibilities that cultivate their interest in the field of manufacturing.

When the National Science Foundation named UNC Charlotte as a finalist in its Regional Innovation Engines program, it marked a significant milestone for the university’s emergence as a national hub for energy innovation. Central to this success is Grid Ancillary services with Uninterruptible Power Supply (GAUPS) technology, developed by Sukumar Kamalasadan, the Duke Energy Distinguished Professor in Engineering in UNC Charlotte’s William States Lee College of Engineering. GAUPS addresses a critical challenge facing advanced manufacturers, hospitals, and data centers across the Carolinas: costly power quality disruptions.

When fall 2024 arrived at UNC Charlotte, five senior Niner Engineers didn’t just get a textbook assignment — they were handed an actual production problem by Bosch Power Tools. The challenge: design a new system to reduce quality defects and ergonomic risks in a packaging process at the company’s Lincolnton, North Carolina, plant.

Highly skilled Niner Engineers are key to North Carolina’s continued rise in technology, energy and advanced manufacturing. Support for their education comes from Engineering North Carolina’s Future, an initiative backed by a $41.2 million investment in the University by the North Carolina General Assembly.

The investment, beginning in fall 2022 to the current fall semester, has yielded record-breaking student enrollment at the W.S. Lee College of Engineering and other significant advances.

Chideraa Ndubuisi ’25 MPH is driven to improve human health. Through research — and an unquenchable appetite for learning everything he can about medicine, public health and environmental systems — he is exploring, analyzing and drawing conclusions about the levels of microplastics and halogenated organics, particularly brominated flame retardants, in municipal wastewater treatment processes.

In the Blue Ridge Mountain town of Lansing, North Carolina, a 10-foot wall of water surged through downtown in September 2024 when the banks of Big Horse Creek overflowed, destroying nearly every business on the main street. Beyond town, hundreds of Ashe County residents were cut off from food, essential supplies and medical care as the bridges that connected their homes to county roads and highways washed away. Over the past year, the paths of three Niner engineers — a determined alumna, a dedicated researcher and a motivated student — have converged, each working alongside family and friends, colleagues and classmates, to help rebuild the bridges of Ashe County.

Mount Sinai researcher selects Charlotte as new home for his lab, NSF award Angelo Gaitas is pioneering a path to understand heat production and heat flow within single cells and tissues. Recently armed with the prestigious NSF CAREER Award, he is developing a precise, microscale device, the world’s first device that measures how efficiently heat […]

Charlotte’s first all-electric race car team is being celebrated with limited-edition gear. Charlotte-based lifestyle brand 704 Shop and UNC Charlotte’s 49ers Racing Electric Vehicle (EV) Team have collaborated in a first-ever partnership between the two groups: a custom-designed t-shirt that serves as a city-wide spotlight, shining local pride on student engineering. The racing-focused apparel is sold as a fundraiser for the student team, with $7.04 from each sale directly supporting the 49ers Racing EV program.

UNC Charlotte and Honeywell today announced a $10 million investment that will expand STEM workforce development and accelerate innovation in the Charlotte region.

The partnership emphasizes student success by supporting scholarships for high-achievers in STEM fields. In total, 48 scholarships will be awarded over the next decade. 

The 2025 inaugural class of Honeywell Scholars was celebrated today. Three of the six scholars are in the William States Lee College of Engineering.

A new Bachelor of Science in Construction Engineering program will help bridge the construction industry’s critical workforce gap between civil engineering design and construction project execution. UNC Charlotte’s William States Lee College of Engineering announced the launch of the new degree which is offered alongside the existing construction management, civil engineering and civil engineering technology programs.