The school was founded in 2014 following a £12m donation by the James Dyson Foundation to the college, being the first new engineering division at Imperial for two decades.

The building was once the London headquarters of the Met Office, from 1910 to 1919, with some of the original interiors and signage preserved inside the entrance from Exhibition Road.

[6] Since then it has had various other uses, including as part of the Science Museum, which adjoins the building to the south, and as a post office.

[8] The school offers a four-year integrated undergraduate Master of Engineering course, which started in 2015.

[5] The department offers five postgraduate courses, including a joint two-year postgraduate course with the Royal College of Art, Innovation Design Engineering, which awards a master's degree in each of art and science from the respective institutions.