Materials Engineering

The advancement of human history has often been characterized by the materials that mankind used - the stone age, the bronze age & the iron age. Today, materials engineering is critical to all other fields of engineering and research. Advances in other fields are often limited by advances in materials.

Materials make up the foundation that governs the development and progress of several industries and sectors. Technologies and devices, spanning from airplanes to hip replacements, are a possibility due to materials engineering and this research area aims to develop new materials but also improve those that already exist.

Materials engineering aims to understand why materials behave in the manner that they do, how their structure influences their behavior and then utilize this knowledge to develop new materials with desirable properties or engineer existing materials such as wood, polymers and even living materials to achieve better performance.

Potential topics within this collection include but are not limited to:

• Ceramics & glass
• Paper & wood
• Composites & polymers
• Smart, hybrid, extreme features of materials
• Mechanics & degradation of materials

Potential fields covered within this collection include, but are not limited to:

• Biomaterials
• Micro- and/or Nanomaterials
• Computational materials science

Collection advisors: Vitor Gaspar (University of Aveiro, Portugal)