The Materials Design and Innovation department emphasizes a data driven perspective of materials discovery and design. We offer unique graduate programs that use materials informatics to link the experimental and computational perspectives of materials science and engineering.
Our masters program is designed to educate individuals so that they have disciplinary knowledge and expertise in materials science and data science. Students are trained to have interdisciplinary perspectives and the necessary skills and tools to be able to understand and apply computational tools for modeling, simulation and informatics, together with experimental driven science so that they have the ability to contribute to and work to accelerate the pace of materials discovery and engineering design.
The Master’s degree in Materials Design and Innovation requires a minimum of 30 credit hours, and a minimum overall GPA of 3.0. The MS required courses are as follows:
Fall Compulsory Courses (3 credits each)
MDI 501 LEC Introduction to Materials Design and Informatics
MDI 502 LEC Quant Structure-Property Relationship in Materials
MDI 503 LEC Thermodynamics and Molecular Structure of Materials
MDI 504 LEC Multivariate Statistics and Materials Informatics
Spring Compulsory Courses (3 credits each)
MDI 505 LEC Computational Materials Chemistry and Physics
MDI 506 LEC Kinetics, Microstructure, and Defects
MDI 507 LEC Quantitative Methods in Materials Characterization
MDI 508 LEC Experimental Design for Materials Development
Summer/Fall (6 credits)
MDI 700 TUT Semester Master’s Project
The curriculum consists of the traditional and classical core foundations of materials science subjects but taught from the perspective of statistics, interpretation of databases and data mining methods. Beyond these core foundations, new distinctive courses in materials science that cover materials informatics, advanced computing methods and machine learning, robotics for materials engineering and an integrated “atoms to device” experimental development laboratory are offered. PhD students will also interface with UB’s Computational Data-enabled Science and Engineering graduate program, providing intensive training in all facets of computational data science that would be of value to both experimental and computational materials scientists.
The PhD degree in Materials Design and Innovation requires the following:
Applicants must complete an online application, upload transcripts, and provide a personal statement and resume. GRE scores are required for admission to the PhD program. Letters of recommendation are required for all MDI graduate programs. International students are required to submit proof of English language proficiency.
Applications are strongly encouraged to be submitted by February 15th to receive full consideration for Fall entry.
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