David Wootton

[Ph.D. ME 1998]
Assistant Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics
Drexel University
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

I earned a Ph.D., worked closely with some great faculty and students, and met many of the top researchers in biomechanics and bioengineering research and leaders in the biomedical industry. When I had completed my research, I had very good credentials and was immediately able to find a postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University.

The faculty is the greatest strength at Georgia Tech. Beyond individual faculty members, the interconnection between engineering schools that occurred in the Bioengineering research community, and the teaching practicum really made the program strong. The responsive and supportive graduate office made it easy to concentrate on learning and research.

My subjective ratings of Georgia Tech today: The graduate program is very good; the members of the faculty are very good to excellent; the student body is good to very good; and the facilities are very good to excellent. I am comparing Georgia Tech to what I know from personal contact with a variety of schools, including MIT, University of Michigan, Drexel, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, Temple, Rutgers, University of Vermont, University of Illinois at Chicago, Stanford, and Johns Hopkins.

One of the impressive things about Tech is that it is improving so rapidly. I see this coming in part from great state support for in-state undergraduate students, wise stewardship of the Woodruff endowment, and the recruitment of some visionary thinkers who have built exciting and well-funded research facilities.