OU Engineering Spearheads Cross-University Materials Doctoral Program

By

Date

NORMAN, OKLA. – The University of Oklahoma is adding a new materials science and engineering (MSE) doctoral program, welcoming its first cohort of students in fall 2025.

Materials science, the study of the structure and behavior of materials, touches many industries important in the state of Oklahoma, including aerospace, defense and energy. The program is a collaborative effort to increase the workforce of highly skilled experts in materials science and engineering.

 “Materials is one of the fastest growing and most well-funded and strategic technology areas,” said John Klier, Ph.D., dean of the Gallogly College of Engineering. “With this initiative, OU is establishing a materials program with a state-of-the-art curriculum and faculty to allow our students access to this exciting arena.”

Alberto Striolo, Ph.D., a professor in the School of Sustainable Chemical, Biological, and Materials Engineering and the director of the new program, says this doctoral option makes the university more competitive with other universities in the SEC and with aspirational peers in the Association of American Universities.

“The idea is to root this program in research excellence and to foster high-impact applications,” said Striolo. “We want to establish collaborations with industry, prepare our students for their careers, and bring in more students and more funding to achieve greater positive impact.”

Students who join the program are expected to come from various educational backgrounds, from petroleum engineering to physics. Striolo says the program has been developed with this challenge in mind. Fifteen credits of mandatory courses will give students the basic principles of the different classes of materials before they move on to elective courses specialized in their materials of interest, such as metals, ceramics, semiconductors, agricultural materials and biological tissues.

Cutting-edge materials science is already happening at the OU. In the past year, Distinguished Materials Visiting Professor Horst Hahn has contributed to two publications in Nature Review Materials about materials science on the topic of high-entropy materials (HEM). HEMs are a new class of material that can be designed to meet specific technological demands. According to one of these papers, HEMs obtained by mixing many elements in special compositional ratios allow the discovery of new materials with capabilities previously thought impossible to achieve together.

Striolo says that the Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts that Oklahoma will require more than 3,000 engineers annually over the next nine years. The MSE program will expand and diversify the types of engineers OU can train to meet that demand and support the diversification of the Oklahoman economy.

“The university's motto is Civi et Reipublicae, for the benefit of the citizen and the state,” said Striolo. “The best way we can support the state of Oklahoma is to train students.”