Congratulations to the University of Kentucky Norwood Student Chapter of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration (SME)! For the 9th time, the UK SME chapter won the Minerals Education Coalition (MEC) Student Chapter Outreach Award. In addition, the chapter won the SME Outstanding Student Chapter Award for the 8th time.
The University of Kentucky placed third at the 28th Annual Carlson Senior Mine Design Competition. The national competition invites students from accredited mining engineering universities to submit their capstone projects to compete with other universities on the best overall mine design.
Daykin Schnell, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mining Engineering, recently finished in the top three of the Pittsburgh Coal Mining Institute of America and Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration (SME), Pittsburgh Section's Short Presentation Contest for his presentation, "Full-scale and small-scale modeling and testing of underground methane explosions."
Congratulations to Department of Mining Engineering seniors, Baylor Mattingly, Waylon Martin, Andrew Minckley and Tyler Stephens, who won third place in the 2025 David D. Eyer Senior Capstone Design Project Award competition.
The Kentucky Professional Engineers in Mining (KY-PEM) is a non-profit membership society for registered professional engineers, and other professionals that specialize in the mining, metallurgy, and exploration industries in Kentucky.
During the Virtual Evening with Mining Engineering, you’ll meet current students, professors, and alumni from the UK Mining Engineering department on Zoom to learn more about the major, the classes, internships and co-ops, career paths, and more.
Thanks to the generous support of Stanley and Karen Pigman and Kentucky’s Research Challenge Trust Fund (RCTF), engineering researchers are receiving additional annual funding to enhance the research priorities and programs of the Pigman College of Engineering. Established in 2024, the Lighthouse Beacon Foundation Endowment supports faculty, research, graduate students, facilities and research infrastructure in the Pigman College of Engineering. This year, the endowment made $235,000 in funds available for distribution.
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.
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.
Recently, mining engineering graduate students from the University of Kentucky student chapter of the American Rock Mechanics Association (ARMA) participated in the ARMA annual student design competition, placing third.
