Engineering

Research

Over the past several years, the college’s research portfolio has grown by leaps and bounds, with a steady increase in funding and significant growth in PhD students. This growth, spurred by the increased quality of our faculty’s research and additional leadership, has enhanced support of graduate programs and new facilities.

Research Centers

Much of our research is supported through industry and multi-institutional partnerships, large multi-year grants, and several research centers. As a regional driver of economic development, the college fosters public and private sector innovation, entrepreneurial activity, and job creation through key partnerships, grants, contracts, and other outreach services.

Department Research

Each of the college’s departments maintains an active research portfolio across a wide range of disciplines that often merge for impactful interdisciplinary approaches in the areas of basic and applied engineering and science.

Tech Transfer

With the diversification of the college’s research initiatives and the ever-increasing portfolio of scientific knowledge, technology transfer and commercialization have become increasingly important. Learn more about some of the successes the college has seen.

Safety Culture

The college is committed to building a strong safety culture around our research. Use the link below to learn more about the initiatives being promoted by the college to achieve this goal.

University

The University of Tennessee is home to thousands of world-class faculty, staff, students, and partners conducting research, scholarship, and creative work at the forefront of knowledge, unlocking solutions to complex challenges and serving the people of Tennessee and communities far beyond.

Charting

The college has experienced a rise in both the amount of annual research expenditures and in the number of full-time faculty researchers. The charts below demonstrate some of the leaps the college has made in recent years.

Research Expenditures

Chart displaying the research expenditure growth from the college going from $68 million in 2015 to $113.5 million in 2024

The college has $113.5M in annual research expenditures from NSF, DoE and UT-Battelle, DoD, industry, the State of Tennessee, and other federal and private agencies.

FTE Tenure/Tenure-Track Faculty

Chart displaying the growth in tenure track and FTE tenure faculty from 155 in 2015 to 167 in 2024

The college houses 16 percent of the university’s tenure-line faculty producing more than 50 percent of the university’s externally awarded research expenditures.

A Unique

UT and Oak Ridge National Lab have a decades-long history of collaboration, with research that has impacted everything from national security to energy to advanced manufacturing, and countless areas in between. Recent years have seen the development or refinement of a number of programs, centers, facilities, and research opportunities, many of which have had a positive and direct impact on the college.

Student works with Brian Wirth at a lab on the Oak Ridge National Lab campus.

More than 80 researchers hold joint appointments at both UT and ORNL including the UT-ORNL Governor’s Chairs, a program that includes nine TCE faculty members. Hundreds of UT graduate students conduct research at ORNL or in collaboration with ORNL’s scientists. The latest breakthroughs in composites have been made by our shared researchers, bringing in collaborators from across the globe.

ORNL and UT recently launched the UT-Oak Ridge Innovations Institute to better align the expertise and infrastructure of both organizations. Their missions is to focus on the development of new multidisciplinary research programs that target large-scale extramural funding opportunities; integrate two or more disciplines; and identify novel approaches to support graduate student training and talent development.

The Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education offers doctoral programs in energy science and data science. These program allow graduate students to work directly with UT faculty, ORNL scientists, and industry partners on projects that advance our state, nation, and world.

Latest Research News