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Breakthrough technologies require more than just rearranging or reshaping the parts and materials already available to us. Solving societal problems, both big and small, by revolutionizing what’s possible requires new materials with transformational properties and capabilities. Materials Engineers leverage math, chemistry, and physics as tools to understand, control, and design the materials we use to make things–enabling and implementing solutions to problems in all areas of science, technology and medicine.

<10:1 Student to faculty ratio

46% of UK MSE majors are women

47% MSE grads

Have research experience at graduation

$71.6K Average starting salary

NACE Summer 2023

79% MSE Grads

Have industry experience at graduation

Discover Materials Science & Engineering

MSE Undergraduate Program

A bachelor of science degree in materials science and engineering (MSE) prepares students for impactful, financially rewarding careers in industry, challenging and dynamic futures as innovators or entrepreneurs and advanced graduate study in a range of fields.

MSE Graduate Program

We are a close-knit program whose greatest pride are the students and their individual successes. Become a part of our work hard, play hard environment and achieve anything. We have interdisciplinary research opportunities.

MSE Department News

5 engineering alumni inducted into 2025 UK Hall of Distinguished Alumni

On Sept. 12, the University of Kentucky will induct 20 alumni into the 2025 Hall of Distinguished Alumni, including five Pigman College of Engineering alumni. The alumni will be honored for their meaningful contributions to the Commonwealth, nation and the world. 

Paterson earns 2 prestigious national awards for research, innovation

Alexandra F. Paterson’s research paves the way for more reliable and innovative technologies that could benefit health care, manufacturing and everyday life. For her work, she has earned two prestigious national awards for early-career faculty: the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award.

20 Pigman College of Engineering researchers among top 2% of world’s most-cited

The University of Kentucky is well-represented on a list of the most-cited researchers in the world. In a database compiled by Stanford University in a partnership with Elsevier, 136 current UK scientists and scholars appear among the top 2% of the most-cited researchers across 22 disciplines. Of those 136 scientists and scholars, 20 are UK Pigman College of Engineering faculty.