History and growth of the Department of materials science

Department of materials science is among the oldest units at Tampere University of Technology. It started as laboratory of metals technology in 1969. The name of the unit was changed in 1972 as Institute of Materials Science and same year first scanning electron microscope (SEM) was acquired. Both of these events were important are still visible in our operation. The change in name was accompanied by will to cover all materials group and acquisition of SEM shows our desire to use state of art equipment and our emphasis on high level structure-property –relationship studies. Our research area has widened both by growth of original unit into the fields of polymers, ceramics and coatings as well as merging with a unit having even longer history, Fiber Material Science. This unit has its history starting in 1911 in Helsinki.

We started to make industrial collaboration very early, already in 1970’s and this collaboration has yielded to a steady growth of department. We have grown to be among the largest departments at TUT and have taught 700 MSc students, 80 licenciates and 50 doctors. Our funding is mostly from Tekes, Academy of Finland, Industry and SHOKs, their funding being 60% of total funding, 40% coming from TUT budget.