Welcome to the website of the Interdisciplinary Programme on Materials Science at IIT Kanpur. This interdisciplinary initiative was started more than 50 years back to encourage people from varied backgrounds to collaborate and come up with an academic programme to train manpower for harnessing the potential of materials to power our technological growth. The technologies of today use a large variety of materials with tailor-made properties, and stringent demands on performance much beyond that can be obtained from naturally occurring materials. Materials Science Programme here at IIT Kanpur has a very strong interdisciplinary approach with both students and faculties coming from different backgrounds. Our student intake is generally from engineering streams such as electrical, mechanical, materials, chemical and science streams of physics and chemistry. These students are put through a rigorous coursework giving them a solid grounding in fundamentals and application of material science. Subsequently, these students pursue independent projects with faculty members for their thesis in areas such as chemical sensors, Nano-composites, batteries, microwaves and multiferroic oxides. The reasonably good placement record for the department indicates that the training imparted to the students is well received, both in the industrial and the academic community.

Various academic institutions and research organizations also make use of the department’s knowledge to develop and improve the process and products. Inter-disciplinary knowledge of students from their graduating courses along with the specific in-depth domain knowledge in doctoral work make them good candidate for industrial application and academia, which is reflected in huge alumni profile.