Materials Engineering Ph.D.

Doctoral Program

The Ph.D. degree requires completion of 72 credit hours. Students must complete a minimum of 29 coursework credits including all the five 4-credit MSE core graduate courses, namely, Advanced Thermodynamics, Advanced Mechanical Properties, Advanced Structure and Bonding, Advanced Electronic Properties and Advanced Kinetics of Materials Reactions; at least one 3- or 4-credit graduate level (6000-level) MSE department course on materials characterization or computational materials science; and at least two additional 3- or 4-credit graduate level (6000-level) courses offered by the School of Engineering and/or the School of Science. The course selections must be approved by the student’s academic adviser and graduate curriculum coordinator prior to the enrollment in the courses.

The student must pass an oral preliminary examination covering the five core subjects, an oral candidacy examination presenting the Ph.D. thesis research proposal with preliminary results, and finally defend the Ph.D. thesis.

Outcomes of the Graduate Curriculum

Students who successfully complete this Ph.D. program will be able to:

• demonstrate knowledge of fundamentals underlying the relationship between the structure, property, and performance of materials.
• formulate, analyze, investigate and defend a dissertation on a research problem that clearly advances the state of knowledge in the field.
• demonstrate effective oral communication skills.
• write a research paper suitable for a peer-review publication.