IUPUI Adds Energy Engineering Degree, Hopes To Avoid Politics

A state university’s engineering department is adding an additional focus on the future of energy.

IUPUI’s department is now officially the Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering.

It’s run by Dean David Russomanno. He says he wants to stay away from the politically-charged topic of the nation’s energy future, which he says he’s doing by encouraging IUPUI professors to be, in his words, “agnostic” about their research.

“As engineers and scientists, we have to approach our work very much where the data leads us and really try to separate that from opinions and other emotional factors.”

Indiana has been at the center of debate over how much coal the nation uses to generate electricity. When he was governor of the state, current Vice President Mike Pence declared the previous presidential administration was waging a a so-called “war on coal.”

IUPUI is jointly run by Purdue and Indiana Universities. Purdue also recently announced a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation to do work on controlling pollution from fossil fuels generated through hydraulic fracturing.