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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

8 faculty and 8 graduate students named Lighthouse Beacon Foundation Scholars

Established in 2024, the Lighthouse Beacon Foundation Endowment supports faculty, research, graduate students, facilities and research infrastructure in the Pigman College of Engineering. In its inaugural year, the endowment has made $160,000 in funds available for distribution, with a priority on faculty and research scholar support.

David Lu, Ph.D candidate and US Department of Energy Scholar brings internship experience to Paducah, Ky.

David Lu, completed his summer internship at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management (EM) headquarters in Washington, D.C. in August. Lu was able to arrange a tour of a cleanup site near his hometown in Western Kentucky.

Pigman College of Engineering welcomes 10 new faculty members.

This fall, the University of Kentucky Pigman College of Engineering welcomed 10 new faculty members.

SpaceLex, UK’s rocketry and propulsion team, takes 1st place at national competition

SpaceLex, the University of Kentucky Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering’s student-led rocketry team, won first place at the Friends of Amateur Rocketry (FAR-51025UNL) competition in the Mojave Desert in Randsburg, California.

The 2024-25 Outstanding Teaching Awards: Anastasia Hauser

Anastasia Hauser, Ph.D., a lecturer in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering in the University of Kentucky Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering, is one of nine winners to receive UK’s 2024-25 Outstanding Teaching Awards.

High school student in Zan Paterson's lab receives worldwide recognition

Grace Sun, a 16-year-old Paul Laurence Dunbar High School student, was awarded the $75,000 top prize from the 2024 Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair for her work completed in Paterson's Organic Materials and Devices Laboratory.