Materials Engineering IISc Information

Established in 1945 as the Department of Metallurgy and re-named in 2006, the Department of Materials Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science has active research groups exploring the exciting world of materials. Its faculty and students are engaged in research on a variety of materials phenomena at multiple lengths and time scales, right from electronic structure and molecular dynamics, through nanomaterials and nanodevices, all the way to microstructures and their effect on materials properties and performance. The department's research interests span a broad spectrum that includes materials processing, mechanical behaviour, thermodynamics and diffusion, ferroelectrics, polymer nanocomposites and devices, organic photovoltaics, biomaterials, thin films, texture and grain boundary engineering, and computational materials science. The research groups work on challenging problems in almost all materials classes: light alloys and composites, high-temperature materials, metallic foams, bulk metallic glasses, structural ceramics, ferroelectric and multiferroic materials, polymers, and biomaterials. The department publishes around 100 research papers each year in ISI journals. The department is proud of the achievements of its over 2000 alums who have subsequently made their way into academia, research and development, design, and industry. Currently, the department has over 100 students in its doctoral programme and over 58 students in the master's programme. In addition, the department faculty also teach and mentor students taking Materials as their major or minor in the Institute's Undergraduate Programme. With its rich history of accomplishments, it is recognized as a leading academic centre in materials education and research. It has been a Centre for Advanced Study (a recognition conferred by the University Grants Commission, UGC) since 1990.