General Information

The Materials Science Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is an interdisciplinary graduate program which brings together faculty from Physics & Astronomy, Chemistry, and various departments in the health sciences (including Dentistry, Orthopaedics, and Biomedical Engineering) to engage in research and training in Materials Science. Faculty from other departments, such as Computer Science, Mathematics, Environmental Sciences and Engineering, and Biochemistry & Biophysics, also participate. Established in 1996 and administered through the Curriculum in Applied and Materials Sciences, the program is unique among materials science programs in that it is not located in an engineering school, but rather builds on the strengths in fundamental and applied science in the related disciplines at the University.  The primary areas of emphasis in the program are electronic and optical materials, polymeric materials, and biomaterials.  Students pursuing M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Science begin their studies with a core curriculum covering the fundamentals of materials and their structures, surfaces, fabrication, thermodynamics, and materials science laboratory techniques. They continue with elective courses as appropriate to their area of research concentration. Graduate students engage in research under the supervision of one of the participating Materials Science faculty in the Curriculum in Applied and Materials Sciences.

The University of North Carolina, the nation’s first state university, is located near Research Triangle Park, home to over one hundred industries and foundations vital to the nation’s ongoing research interests. The cities of Chapel Hill, Raleigh and Durham, which form the points of the "triangle," foster a unique metropolitan area offering abundant cultural and educational opportunities. Money magazine (Sept. 1994) ranked the Triangle area first among the top 300 places to live in the United States. The Town of Chapel Hill, nicknamed “The Southern Part of Heaven,” enjoys the best of small town living in a unique cosmopolitan environment. The campus, which covers over 700 acres, enrolls 24,000 undergraduate, graduate and professional students, and is one of 16 constituent institutions of the multi-campus state university.