History

In January, 2007 the School started as Institute of Manufacturing Engineering (IME) in a hired accommodation in Sector F-11, Islamabad. The Institute was established with the funding from Islamic Development Bank. The responsibilities were given to Mr Fazal Ellahi as Acting Director of the Institute to look after the affairs of the Institute and to procure the laboratories equipment. During the same year in May 2007, Dr Abid Pervaiz Ghuman was appointed as Head of the Institute. Simultaneously, during the same month, the Institute was renamed as School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering (SMME) in order to add more diversity in the activities.

Anticipating delivery of the laboratories equipment and realizing the need for space, School was allocated a building in H-12 Campus of NUST in 2008 and SMME was also partly moved to the new location. In parallel to the construction of building, installation of lab equipment was started. Meanwhile, planning for launching of Mechanical Engineering at undergraduate and Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering at postgraduate levels was undertaken. The approval of the curriculum was obtained from the Academic Council in 2008.

In August 2009, Dr Abdul Ghafoor was appointed as new head of the School. Same year school started functioning in H-12 campus of NUST. From September 2009, first batch of 40 undergraduate students of Mechanical Engineering and 13 postgraduate students of Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering, joined the School and a dream of an institute for full support to the community and industry became a reality.

During last seven years, a lot of activities have been started in the School on different fronts. The School has added more programs and renamed some with the market demand outside. SMME has four degree awarding departments that include Department of Mechanical, Department of Design and Manufacturing, Department of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, and Department of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences. The School offers undergraduate program in Mechanical Engineering and Postgraduate programs in Mechanical, Design and Manufacturing, Robotics and Intelligent Machine and Biomedical Engineering and Sciences. The school faculty is actively engaged in academic and industrial research. As of today, the School has a population of 500 undergraduates and 533 postgraduates including 35 PhD students. The School has world class laboratories and faculty strength of 50 with more than 35 PhDs qualified from worlds’ leading universities