To fund faculty and graduate student research endeavors, the college receives over $70 million annually in grant awards.
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Our research areas include artificial intelligence, energy, carbon capture, security, sustainable manufacturing, resilient infrastructure, transportation, advanced materials, rare earth materials, computational systems and health applications.
Immerse yourself in active research labs, present at conferences, publish scientific papers in respected journals and work with colleagues who are committed to advancing the commonwelth of Kentucky and beyond .
The field of engineering is a team story. Many research opportunities are interdisciplinary in their approach to solution discovery. Work with the Director of Graduate Studies in your area of interest to find a graduate assistantship or fellowship.
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If you want to work with renowned faculty, immerse yourself in an active research lab, present at conferences and publish scientific papers in respected journals, you should consider a graduate degree program at the University of Kentucky.
Over 30 of our faculty members have received CAREER Awards from the National Science Foundation, and the college receives over $70 million annually in grant awards.
The College hosts ten research units and is affiliated with numerous other University of Kentucky research centers and institutes.
The University of Kentucky Pigman College of Engineering is the largest and highest-ranked engineering college in the state. With our small class sizes and wide-ranging opportunities for student involvement and leadership, we want to help you build your future in engineering.
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A team of researchers from the University of Kentucky’s Pigman College of Engineering Joseph Halcomb III, M.D. Department of Biomedical Engineering was selected as an editor’s pick for their paper, "Multi-parametric functional optical spectroscopy to monitor the metabolic and vascular changes in small head and neck tumors in vivo with radiation stress," in the July issue of Biomedical Optics Express.
Tie “Thomas” Luo, Ph.D., associate professor in the University of Kentucky Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has received the Best Paper Award at the Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD) 2025 Workshop on Pattern Mining and Machine Learning for Bioinformatics for his recent work titled “Unlocking Neural Transparency: Jacobian Maps for Explainable AI in Alzheimer’s Detection.”
Zach Agioutantis, Ph.D., the Mining Engineering Foundation Professor and chair of the Department of Mining Engineering in the UK Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering, has been honored as a 2025-26 University Research Professor.
The University of Kentucky Materials Science Research Priority Area (mRPA) has selected 11 researchers as recipients of multiple funding awards. Among the are four engineering faculty members.
Diana M. Byrne, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering in the University of Kentucky Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering, is one of nine winners to receive the University of Kentucky’s 2025 Outstanding Teaching Awards.
