Effective July 1, 2026, the Department of Materials (MAT) was established as the seventh academic department of the School of Engineering. MAT aims to become a world-class, impact-driven, interdisciplinary research hub, transforming traditional Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) into AI-powered “MSE-I” and driving breakthroughs in five key areas: health and biomedicine, energy and computing, engineering structures, characterization and modeling, and AI and robotic platforms.