A new materials science and engineering degree program will be created by existing and new faculty of the University at Buffalo (UB). The program, dubbed MSE@UB is a collaborative effort by UB’s College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
The decision to create MSE@UB graduate program was made to formalize the experience of the university's professors in the materials science and engineering field. UB’s pending creation of a graduate program coincides with rising interest in the field, due to significant advancements in nanotechnology and a new attention to manufacturing.
Frank V. Bright, a SUNY Distinguished Professor and the A. Conger Goodyear professor at UB, stated that they have planned to collectively bring a lot of experience into the university’s science and engineering schools and will hire new faculty members in the next three years, who have more experience in this field. The MSE@UB program will be co-directed by Bright along with Paschalis Alexandridis, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at UB.
Several degree programs offered by universities originated from metallurgy, a field that mainly focuses on the study of metals. In the last century, the field advanced to include semiconductors, plastics and other materials. Hence, universities rebranded their programs as materials sciences and engineering. In addition, the field includes nanotechnology, a new branch of science and engineering that determines how materials can be synthesized on atomic and molecular scales. MSE@UB will correlate with UB’s Integrated Nanostructured Systems program, which is an eight-year-old research project that focuses on nanotechnology and nanoscience. In addition, the new program will coincide with the university’s New York State Center of Excellence in Materials Informatics.
Source: http://www.buffalo.edu/