The University of Oregon has a history of materials science education and research through the Materials Science Institute. Our faculty receive millions of dollars in funding to investigate solutions to some of society’s most pressing problems, from decarbonization to clean energy production and storage.
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MATERIALS SCIENCE RESEARCH FACULTY
Research Across Disciplines
The Materials Science and Technology program is interdisciplinary by nature, bringing together faculty from the Physics and Chemistry and Biochemistry departments who collaborate across disciplines. Our faculty founded the Materials Science Institute and the Oregon Center for Electrochemistry, both of which have been instrumental in launching technology careers and leading innovative research in materials science. Our affiliated centers and institutes include:
Research Facilities
Modern research instrumentation is an integral part of cutting-edge science. Our faculty and students conduct research in world-class materials characterization and advanced fabrication facilities.
News
BIOLOGY - Marine biologist Alan Shanks has a simple trap that allows him to predict the amount of Dungeness crab will be available for fisherfolk. For the past 25 years, Shanks has compared the yields of the winter commercial catch to the baby crabs his water-jug trap collects each summer. He’s found that the number of baby crabs that arrive on the coast can be used to estimate the size of the state’s commercial harvest of adult Dungeness crab years in the future, with a 12 percent margin of error.
CHEMISTRY AND BIOCHEMISTRY - It's August, and the fall term is around the corner, but associate professor Carl Brozek is heading to Japan through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program. None of them, including Brozek or the lab in Japan he'll be working in, know that he’ll be there when his research colleagues at Kyoto University get some epic news about their work on structures known as metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs.
PHYSICS - An assistant professor of physics at the University of Oregon College of Arts and Sciences, Nguyen has been named the 2025 recipient of the American Physical Society’s (APS) Maria Goeppert Mayer Award. Named after a German American theoretical physicist who was co-awarded the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics, this award honors exceptional achievement by a woman physicist in the early years of her career.
