Equipment in Undergraduate Teaching Lab, opened Sept. 2003. Laboratory subjects are part of the materials curriculum and this facility is used by all DMSE undergraduates to study fields such as processing, mechanics, organic materials chemistry, and inorganic materials chemistry. The lab includes separate areas devoted to biomaterials, inorganic materials synthesis, and electronic materials characterization. Instruments include an SEM with special capabilities for electronic materials characterization, fume hoods devoted to biomaterials and inorganic materials study, spectrometers, magnetometers, and about 12 Athena terminals. The lab layout includes sufficient space to allow for several lab groups to be working simultaneously on relatively different projects.

At MIT, research is done in all areas of materials science and engineering. There are hundreds of research projects iinvolving DMSE faculty which are supported by an average of $18 million annually. A large portion of this support comes from government grants (from all branches of the military, the Department of Energy, NASA, the National ScienceFoundation, the National Institute for Health, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology). Approximately one-third of the support comes directly from industry and much of the remainder comes from the various MIT alliances—the Singapore-MIT Alliance, the Cambridge-MIT Institute, the Dupont-MIT Alliance, and the Ford-MIT Alliance.

These grants provide not only for laboratory supplies and equipment but also for stipends and tuition for graduate students and pay for undergraduates performing research on a project.