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Materials Science and Engineering: Translating fundamental discoveries at the nanoscale into materials that benefit society.

The vast majority of the materials people encounter every day have been engineered to have specific properties that make the materials useful or valuable. As materials scientists and engineers, our goal is to understand how the arrangement of the materials' structures on a very fine scale translates into materials with properties that can benefit society. Our department continually strives to expand its core strengths and to work across disciplines to address complex challenges, from more efficient jet engines to new electronic materials that extend the limits of Moore's law. With recent faculty hires, we have reinforced our expertise in corrosion, high-temperature materials, surfaces and interface science, electronic materials, and computational materials science. And we are firmly established in such emerging fields as two-dimensional materials, soft and/or biological materials, and functional thermal material systems.

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Our Faculty

Thumbnail of Kory Burns

Kory Burns

Assistant Professor, Materials Science and Engineering, starting Fall 2024

Research Areas
  • Optical excitations in Transmission electron microscopy (EELS, EEGS, CL)
  • Radiation tolerance of two-dimensional materials, lateral/vertical heterostructures, and moiré materials
  • In-situ electron microscopy integrated with machine learning methodologies
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Thumbnail of Haydn N. Wadley
Phone: ​434 982-5671

Haydn N. Wadley

University Professor, Edgar Starke Professor of Materials Science and Engineering

Research Areas
  • High Temperature Materials Design
  • Materials synthesis and processing
  • Combinatorial synthesis and high throughput screening
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Thumbnail of Leonid V. Zhigilei
Phone: 434-243-3582

Leonid V. Zhigilei

Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Academic Advisor, MSE Virginia Engineering Online Program

Research Areas
  • Microscale Heat Transfer
  • Surface and Interface Science and Engineering
  • Computation Materials Science
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More About Our Department

Research Highlights

More About Us

  • 108

    Graduate students

  • 23

    Faculty members

  • $ 11 M

    In sponsored research for FY 2021