Welcome to the homepage for the MatSE Junior Labs at the University of Illinois!

Have you ever dropped your cellphone and cracked the screen? Have you ever ripped the door off a car after turning angry and green? (Hopefully not…) What about chipping a glass while putting away the dishes, or been annoyed when the non-stick coating starts to peel off your favorite frying pan? Do you ever wonder why your car engine needs motor oil to function? Or how we can possibly measure the temperature of volcanoes and blast furnaces? Or how much moisture a diaper can really hold? All of this and more depend on material properties!

Materials are all around us. They shape our lives, and history has even been defined in terms of materials advancement:  the Stone Age, the Iron Age, the Bronze Age. In modern times, think about how much our lives depend on silicon and other electronic materials. New materials are constantly being created, and improvements made to existing materials. As Materials Scientists and Engineers, we are concerned with how processing, (micro)structure, properties, and performance are interconnected. Through our junior labs, our students are given extensive experience with studying and testing these interconnections, growing their own technical skills and understanding of what MatSE really is.

How this works:

The junior labs consist of two classes:  MSE 307, which is offered in the Fall semester, and MSE 308, which is offered in the Spring. The two classes also combine to serve as the Advanced Composition requirement for our students. Through these courses, students will learn how to collect, analyze, and communicate their data and results through written reports and oral presentations.  Students also learn how to work effectively in teams over the course of the year.  That being said, we still find some time to have fun, break some samples, get our hands dirty, and learn more about Materials Science and Engineering in practice.

For more information on MSE 307 (Materials Lab I), click here.

For more information on MSE 308 (Materials Lab II), click here.

Check out our current instructional team of awesomeness!