New Course!
Offered: Spring 2026
Instructor: Kamal Choudhary
Description: This course introduces core concepts and modern techniques in artificial intelligence and data science, with a focus on applications in materials science. Topics include classification, regression, clustering, and generative AI, using models such as random forests, neural networks (NN), convolutional neural networks (CNN), graph neural networks (GNN), and transformer-based architectures (e.g., GPT). Students will work with real-world materials datasets derived from multiscale modeling and experimental measurements, including tabular, image-based, and structural formats. Hands-on coding exercises and a final project will reinforce practical applications.
Master’s Core Course: This course is designed solely for materials science and engineering master’s students.
Offered: Every fall
Instructor: Jim Spicer
Description: A graduate-level introduction to the structure and properties of materials, including bonding in solids, structures of inorganic solids (metals, semiconductors, ceramics, and glasses) and organic materials (molecular solids, polymers, biomaterials), techniques for structural characterization, and structural defects.
Master’s Core Course: This course is designed solely for materials science and engineering master’s students.
Offered: Every spring (taught by the Department of Mechanical Engineering in spring even years as EN.530.604)
Instructor: Todd Hufnagel
Description: An introduction to the properties and behavior of materials subjected to mechanical forces and deformation. Topics include the influence of composition and microstructure on the stiffness, strength, and toughness of materials. Particular emphasis is placed on fundamental mechanisms of deformation and fracture in the basic classes of materials (metals, ceramics, and polymers) as well as more complex materials (composites and biomaterials).
Master’s Core Course: This course is designed solely for materials science and engineering master’s students.
Offered: Every Spring
Instructor: Yuting Luo
Description: Topics include laws of thermodynamics, equilibrium of single and multiphase systems, chemical thermodynamics, statistical thermodynamics of solid solutions, equilibrium phase diagrams, chemical kinetics, diffusion in solids, nucleation and growth processes, coarsening, and glass transition.
Offered: Every spring
Instructor: Regina García-Méndez
Description: This course provides a comprehensive understanding of the principles underlying the development and operation of solid-state batteries, including the current state of the energy storage landscape. The course explores thermodynamics, kinetics, materials selection for solid-state battery design, interfacial electrochemistry, experimental methods, and practical considerations. Students will also gain hands-on experience by assembling and testing various Li-ion battery configurations and analyzing their electrochemical test results.
Offered: Every fall
Instructor: Regina García-Méndez
Description: This course introduces a variety of techniques for characterizing the structure, composition, and properties of engineering materials, including metals, ceramics, polymers, and composites. In the second half of the course, students complete a hands-on “mystery materials” project in which they apply selected characterization techniques to identify unknown materials and evaluate how processing history influences structure, microstructure, and properties.