The department is housed in the H. M. Black Engineering Building, which was completed in 1985, and in the Nuclear Engineering Laboratory. The department's research facilities include laboratories for controls, robotics, fluid mechanics, heat transfer, unsteady viscous flows, fluidized bed heat and mass transfer and combustion, powder combustion, electrostatic precipitation, laser applications, material properties, computer-aided manufacturing processes, shock tube studies, thermal/environmental studies, tribology, turbomachinery components, reactor core analysis, reactor thermal hydraulics, nuclear waste management, nuclear fuel cycles, nuclear instrumentation, radiation effects on materials, nondestructive examination of materials, reactor kinetics, and control.
The Engineering Research Institute supports several general-purpose laboratories and service organizations for the College of Engineering, including an electron microscope laboratory, an X-ray diffraction laboratory, an analytical laboratory (for chemical analyses), complete machine and electronics shops, and an editorial office.
At ISU, the Durham Center for Computation provides research and educational computer services for the entire university. The center's main thrust is in distributed computing with the system being refered to as Project Vincent. Project Vincent is made up of approximately 800 DECstations, Alphastations, and SGI workstations. The Mechanical Engineering Department maintains approximately 50 DECstations and Alphastations which are part of Project Vincent.
ISU's Parks Library collection offers open-shelf access to over a million volumes. Serial publications are received regularly from throughout the world.
The Ames Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy is located on campus.