The development of science and technology in modern society consistently requires the development of new and state-of-the-art materials responding to the domestic and foreign upheavals. This department aims to cultivate high-level engineers to meet the needs of industry, science, and technology, and to supply a better quality education through the research and development of new materials to solve the problems of the engineering community. This department also aims to cultivate talented people suitable for industries and research institutes by opening courses in various fields for the development of materials to perform more successful research.

The advancement of scientific technology constantly requires the use of new materials. Materials science and engineering is the study finding the relationship between the microstructure and properties of materials through development, application, and manufacturing of materials, and aims to design new materials which provide more convenient and cheaper tools and to develop new manufacturing processes to enhance productivity and competitiveness.
The Department of Materials Science and Engineering has a wide range of education and research programs for metals, ceramics, electronics and polymeric materials, and emphasizes education on the phenomena and principles related to the microstructure and properties of various materials. For this purpose, this department not only trains students to understand the relationship between the microstructure and the mechanical, physical and chemical properties of materials, based on basic sciences, but also performs research to improve the properties of materials with various kinds of process design parameters and manufacturing technology through paper research.

Materials industry is the center of all industrial-based developments, e.g. metals, inorganic, organic, composite materials, is recognized as a standard to estimate the industrial development of the country. In the present, much more money has been intensively invested on the research and development of materials, compared to other industries. In other words, the development of new materials ranging from the traditional ferrous and non-ferrous materials to recent energy and eco-friendly materials, nano-materials, bio-materials, semiconductors including electronic packaging materials and non-destructive reliability will continue until the end of the development of human civilization.
Materials-related industries cover electronics, semiconductosr, bio-medical, steel, automobiles, ships, aircraft, nuclear power and material processing industries, and are making inroads into many engineering and basic science research fields, for instance, national research institutes, public enterprises, non-destructive analysis companies, environment, information and communications, high-precision processing technology, and venture enterprises, including academics.

Materials technology, the basis for the development of civilization, plays a leading role in all industrial sectors.
Nevertheless, there are currently not enough human resources available for the national development of materials, and the shortage of manpower is expected to intensify in the near future. Thus, the cultivation of high skilled scientific technician by the retraining of the workforce is highly required in addition to the advanced training of young scientists and engineers. In summary, the future development potential of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering is regarded to be very high at home and abroad, and will play a role in strengthening the capacity of the Republic of Korea to develop as an industrialized country by training high-quality human resources which contribute to the industrial development of the country and respond to these global industry trends and by investing manpower for national research institutes and corporate research organizations.