Trends in Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) Education

Materials research over the last three decades has led to significant advances in the manufacturing of new materials with tailored and unique properties for a variety of applications. These advances have come about mostly because of a highly influential National Research Council study titled "Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) for the 1990's: Maintaining Competitiveness in the Age of Materials," that defined and delineated MSE around four basic elements of synthesis and processing, structure, properties and performance. In this presentation, an overview of the recent trends in incorporating these four basic elements in MSE education will be given, followed by an example of the MSE program at the University of California, Riverside. The program offers interdisciplinary BS, MS and PhD degrees in MSE. At the undergraduate level, the program integrates with all five engineering departments in the Bourns College of Engineering (BCOE). This new approach allows students to have meaningful interactions with engineers from other engineering disciplines who ultimately are the "end-users" of materials. At the graduate level, the UCR MSE program integrates with other disciplines such as Physics and Chemistry.

Speaker: Reza Abbaschian, UC Riverside