The Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Kentucky was established in 1995 through the merger of the Department of Chemical Engineering and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
Faculty members in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering have forged a highly-collaborative environment for research and education.
The breadth and flexibility of chemical engineering enables graduates to work on some of the most exciting and demanding challenges presented by areas as diverse as energy generation and sustainability; environmental protection; medicine and biotechnology; transportation and housing!
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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.
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Faculty members in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering have forged a highly-collaborative environment for research and education. Chemical and materials engineering faculty interact on a range of multi-disciplinary research projects that encompass collaborations with faculty across campus.
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We maintain a strong relationship with our alumni and encourage them to keep in touch with us. Stay connected by filling out our alumni information form, or send updates directly to our department chair, Tom Dziubla, at thomas.dziubla@uky.edu.
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This fall semester, the University of Kentucky Pigman College of Engineering - Paducah Campus welcomed 54 incoming first-year students — the largest first-year class in program history. The Paducah Campus, which offers bachelor’s degrees in mechanical engineering, chemical engineering and computer engineering technology, was established 27 years ago to develop and retain engineering talent in the Western Kentucky region.
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.
The University of Kentucky’s Office of Transdisciplinary Educational approaches to advance Kentucky (TEK) has announced the TEK Faculty Fellows for the 2025-26 academic year. A critical mission of TEK is the development of new transdisciplinary courses and the reimagining of existing courses to emphasize one or more essential employability skills. To accomplish this, TEK is leveraging the expertise of a new cohort of TEK Faculty Fellows.
Six Pigman College of Engineering faculty members received National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) awards, the Foundation's prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty, in the 2025 funding cycle. This year, the Pigman College of Engineering recorded its highest number of NSF CAREER awardees in the 30-year history of the program. In addition, the college boasted a 75% success rate for CAREER awards in the 2025 funding cycle.
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.
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.
