Our goal is to build upon recognized research strengths, including energy production and distribution; transportation and logistics; manufacturing and materials, and accelerate collaborative research in areas such as autonomous systems; sustainable systems and structures; engineering for human health; computing and information; and cyber-physical systems and security.
The University of Kentucky is one of only eight universities in the country with a major medical center featuring six health sciences colleges, and the full spectrum of academic colleges on one continuous campus. The close proximity of such a large range of programs is an incubator for inter- and transdisciplinary initiatives. Discoveries from these collaborations allow our researchers to address the needs of the citizens of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, our nation and our world.
John Balk, William T. Bryan Professor of Materials Engineering and associate dean for research and graduate studies, has established an outstanding record of research productivity, quality and impact that places him amongst our most distinguished faculty in the Pigman College of Engineering. Balk’s research focus is the elucidation of structure-property relationships in the behavior of metals, alloys and covalent materials, with current projects related to size effects and mechanical behavior, high-entropy alloys, and functional properties of thermionic dispenser cathodes. Balk has served as chair for the Gordon Research Conference on Thin Film and Small-Scale Mechanical Behavior, and in 2015 was elected one of five national co-chairs for the fall meeting of the Materials Research Society, the largest professional organization for materials scientists and engineers.
Engineering education leaders from across the Southeastern Conference (SEC) gathered at the University of Kentucky for the annual SEC Engineering Leadership Meeting. The meeting welcomed more than 100 participants, including engineering deans, associate deans, department chairs and other higher educational leaders.
What once started as a mission to test an aircraft on Mars has turned into research using drones at the University of Kentucky that now helps engineers predict tornadoes.
A team of researchers from the University of Kentucky’s Pigman College of Engineering Joseph Halcomb III, M.D. Department of Biomedical Engineering was selected as an editor’s pick for their paper, "Multi-parametric functional optical spectroscopy to monitor the metabolic and vascular changes in small head and neck tumors in vivo with radiation stress," in the July issue of Biomedical Optics Express.
Tie “Thomas” Luo, Ph.D., associate professor in the University of Kentucky Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has received the Best Paper Award at the Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD) 2025 Workshop on Pattern Mining and Machine Learning for Bioinformatics for his recent work titled “Unlocking Neural Transparency: Jacobian Maps for Explainable AI in Alzheimer’s Detection.”
Zach Agioutantis, Ph.D., the Mining Engineering Foundation Professor and chair of the Department of Mining Engineering in the UK Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering, has been honored as a 2025-26 University Research Professor.
The University of Kentucky Materials Science Research Priority Area (mRPA) has selected 11 researchers as recipients of multiple funding awards. Among the are four engineering faculty members.
Diana M. Byrne, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering in the University of Kentucky Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering, is one of nine winners to receive the University of Kentucky’s 2025 Outstanding Teaching Awards.
University of Kentucky Libraries has honored W. Brent Seales, Ph.D., the Stanley and Karen Pigman Chair of Heritage Science and Professor of Computer Science, as the 2025 recipient of the UK Libraries Medallion for Intellectual Achievement.
Zach Agioutantis, department chair and professor for the department of Mining Engineering, was named University Research Professors for the 2025-26 academic year.
Made possible by a $14 million infrastructure grant from the National Science Foundation, EduceLab is the university’s bold vision for next-generation heritage science. The lab was unveiled during a “soft opening” last week — launching a new era of discovery, education and innovation at the intersection of the humanities, engineering and data science.
