Message from the Undergraduate Program Director

Welcome to Rutgers Materials Science & Engineering, the place where the future is made

On behalf of our faculty, I am delighted to welcome you to Rutgers Materials Science and Engineering and, more importantly, to the Rutgers MSE family.

You have chosen a field that sits at the intersection of science, engineering, technology, and imagination. Almost every transformative technology begins with a material: the semiconductor chips powering artificial intelligence, batteries enabling the energy transition, materials capable of surviving spaceflight and extreme environments, quantum technologies, biomedical implants, sustainable manufacturing, and technologies that have yet to be invented. Materials Science & Engineering is where we learn not only how the world is made, but how to make it better.

And now, you are part of it.

Over the next three years, Rutgers MSE will become your intellectual home and, we hope, your home away from home. We are a diverse, inclusive, collaborative, and close-knit community of students, faculty, researchers, alumni, and friends. Our graduates can be found across the United States and around the world in industry, national laboratories, universities, startups, government, and emerging technology sectors, solving difficult problems and making a difference.

One of the defining strengths of Rutgers MSE is something increasingly rare at a major research university -you will be known here. Our exceptional student-to-faculty ratio allows us to know our students as individuals, their interests, ambitions, strengths, and goals. You will not simply be another student sitting in a lecture hall. From the beginning, we will treat you as what you are becoming, namely, a fellow Rutgers engineer.

Our commitment extends far beyond helping you complete a degree. We will challenge you, mentor you, advise you, and help you discover where your abilities can take you. Whether your goal is to become an engineer in industry, pursue graduate or professional school, launch a company, conduct groundbreaking research, or follow a path you have not yet imagined, we want to help you build the foundation to get there.

Your education will combine rigorous scientific and engineering fundamentals with hands-on learning in advanced laboratories. You will learn from internationally recognized faculty working at the frontiers of materials research, while developing the analytical, experimental, computational, and problem-solving skills demanded by modern engineering.

But we do not want you simply to learn about Materials Science & Engineering. We want you to do Materials Science & Engineering.

That is why we strongly encourage you to become involved in faculty research as early as your sophomore year. Work in a laboratory. Ask questions nobody has answered yet. Learn how discoveries happen. Pursue internships and co-ops. Meet our alumni. Build professional relationships. Explore technologies outside your comfort zone. Take advantage of everything that a major research university like Rutgers can offer.

We have also designed our curriculum with flexibility in mind because no two students and no two futures are exactly alike. Your interests may lead you toward physics, computing and artificial intelligence, mathematics, electronics, energy, business, entrepreneurship, medicine, or another engineering discipline. Through minors, double majors, electives, research, internships, and interdisciplinary opportunities, you can shape an educational experience that reflects who you are and who you want to become.

And remember, the technologies that will define the next several decades are being developed right now.

Someone will create the next generation of energy-storage materials. Someone will develop materials for quantum computers. Someone will design materials that survive hypersonic flight, fusion reactors, or missions to other worlds. Someone will invent more sustainable ways of manufacturing the products on which society depends. Above all, someone will discover materials the applications of which we cannot yet imagine.

Why shouldn't that someone be you?

Your time at Rutgers MSE will be demanding. There will be difficult courses, challenging laboratories, long nights, unexpected setbacks, and problems that initially seem impossible. That is part of becoming an engineer. But you will not make that journey alone. Your classmates, faculty, advisers, alumni, and the entire Rutgers MSE community will be here to support you.

Three years from now, I hope you will leave Rutgers not simply with an engineering degree, but with something far more valuable…the confidence to confront problems you have never seen before, the intellectual independence to ask questions others have not thought to ask, and the courage to build things that do not yet exist.

So explore. Question. Experiment. Build. Fail occasionally. Learn constantly. Find what fascinates you and pursue it relentlessly.

You are not simply preparing to enter the future. You are preparing to engineer it.

Welcome to Rutgers MSE. We are very glad you are here.

All the best,

Dr. E. Koray Akdoğan
Associate Professor & Undergraduate Program Director
IEEE Senior Member, Class of 2005