How to become a Materials Scientist 2024

Materials Scientist Research and study the structures and chemical properties of various natural and synthetic or composite materials, including metals, alloys, rubber, ceramics, semiconductors, polymers, and glass. Determine ways to strengthen or combine materials or develop new materials with new or specific properties for use in a variety of products and applications. Includes glass scientists, ceramic scientists, metallurgical scientists, and polymer scientists.

Materials Scientist is Also Know as

In different settings, Materials Scientist is titled as

Materials Scientist
Micro Electrical/Mechanical Systems Device Scientist (MEMS Device Scientist)
Polymer Materials Consultant
Research and Development Scientist (R and D Scientist)
Research Scientist
Scientist

Education and Training of Materials Scientist

Materials Scientist is categorized in Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed

Experience Required for Materials Scientist

Extensive skill, knowledge, and experience are needed for these occupations. Many require more than five years of experience. For example, surgeons must complete four years of college and an additional five to seven years of specialized medical training to be able to do their job.

Education Required for Materials Scientist

Most of these occupations require graduate school. For example, they may require a master's degree, and some require a Ph.D., M.D., or J.D. (law degree).

Degrees Related to Materials Scientist

Training Required for Materials Scientist

Employees may need some on-the-job training, but most of these occupations assume that the person will already have the required skills, knowledge, work-related experience, and/or training.

Related Ocuupations

Some Ocuupations related to Materials Scientist in different industries are

What Do Materials Scientist do?

Plan laboratory experiments to confirm feasibility of processes and techniques used in the production of materials with special characteristics.
Confer with customers to determine how to tailor materials to their needs.
Conduct research on the structures and properties of materials, such as metals, alloys, polymers, and ceramics, to obtain information that could be used to develop new products or enhance existing ones.
Devise testing methods to evaluate the effects of various conditions on particular materials.
Determine ways to strengthen or combine materials or develop new materials with new or specific properties for use in a variety of products and applications.
Recommend materials for reliable performance in various environments.
Test individual parts and products to ensure that manufacturer and governmental quality and safety standards are met.
Visit suppliers of materials or users of products to gather specific information.
Research methods of processing, forming, and firing materials to develop such products as ceramic dental fillings, unbreakable dinner plates, and telescope lenses.
Test material samples for tolerance under tension, compression, and shear to determine the cause of metal failures.
Test metals to determine conformance to specifications of mechanical strength, strength-weight ratio, ductility, magnetic and electrical properties, and resistance to abrasion, corrosion, heat, and cold.
Teach in colleges and universities.
Perform experiments and computer modeling to study the nature, structure, and physical and chemical properties of metals and their alloys, and their responses to applied forces.
Prepare reports, manuscripts, proposals, and technical manuals for use by other scientists and requestors, such as sponsors and customers.
Supervise and monitor production processes to ensure efficient use of equipment, timely changes to specifications, and project completion within time frame and budget.
Write research papers for publication in scientific journals.

Qualities of Good Materials Scientist

Written Comprehension: The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
Written Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
Oral Comprehension: The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
Inductive Reasoning: The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
Oral Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
Problem Sensitivity: The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing that there is a problem.
Deductive Reasoning: The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
Information Ordering: The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
Category Flexibility: The ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping things in different ways.
Near Vision: The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
Mathematical Reasoning: The ability to choose the right mathematical methods or formulas to solve a problem.
Speech Clarity: The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
Flexibility of Closure: The ability to identify or detect a known pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in other distracting material.
Fluency of Ideas: The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
Number Facility: The ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide quickly and correctly.
Perceptual Speed: The ability to quickly and accurately compare similarities and differences among sets of letters, numbers, objects, pictures, or patterns. The things to be compared may be presented at the same time or one after the other. This ability also includes comparing a presented object with a remembered object.
Speech Recognition: The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
Visualization: The ability to imagine how something will look after it is moved around or when its parts are moved or rearranged.
Originality: The ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem.
Selective Attention: The ability to concentrate on a task over a period of time without being distracted.
Speed of Closure: The ability to quickly make sense of, combine, and organize information into meaningful patterns.
Visual Color Discrimination: The ability to match or detect differences between colors, including shades of color and brightness.
Memorization: The ability to remember information such as words, numbers, pictures, and procedures.
Far Vision: The ability to see details at a distance.
Time Sharing: The ability to shift back and forth between two or more activities or sources of information (such as speech, sounds, touch, or other sources).
Finger Dexterity: The ability to make precisely coordinated movements of the fingers of one or both hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble very small objects.
Auditory Attention: The ability to focus on a single source of sound in the presence of other distracting sounds.
Manual Dexterity: The ability to quickly move your hand, your hand together with your arm, or your two hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble objects.
Control Precision: The ability to quickly and repeatedly adjust the controls of a machine or a vehicle to exact positions.
Arm-Hand Steadiness: The ability to keep your hand and arm steady while moving your arm or while holding your arm and hand in one position.
Reaction Time: The ability to quickly respond (with the hand, finger, or foot) to a signal (sound, light, picture) when it appears.
Hearing Sensitivity: The ability to detect or tell the differences between sounds that vary in pitch and loudness.
Rate Control: The ability to time your movements or the movement of a piece of equipment in anticipation of changes in the speed and/or direction of a moving object or scene.
Depth Perception: The ability to judge which of several objects is closer or farther away from you, or to judge the distance between you and an object.
Wrist-Finger Speed: The ability to make fast, simple, repeated movements of the fingers, hands, and wrists.
Multilimb Coordination: The ability to coordinate two or more limbs (for example, two arms, two legs, or one leg and one arm) while sitting, standing, or lying down. It does not involve performing the activities while the whole body is in motion.
Response Orientation: The ability to choose quickly between two or more movements in response to two or more different signals (lights, sounds, pictures). It includes the speed with which the correct response is started with the hand, foot, or other body part.
Trunk Strength: The ability to use your abdominal and lower back muscles to support part of the body repeatedly or continuously over time without "giving out" or fatiguing.
Dynamic Flexibility: The ability to quickly and repeatedly bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with your body, arms, and/or legs.
Gross Body Coordination: The ability to coordinate the movement of your arms, legs, and torso together when the whole body is in motion.
Gross Body Equilibrium: The ability to keep or regain your body balance or stay upright when in an unstable position.
Static Strength: The ability to exert maximum muscle force to lift, push, pull, or carry objects.
Extent Flexibility: The ability to bend, stretch, twist, or reach with your body, arms, and/or legs.
Explosive Strength: The ability to use short bursts of muscle force to propel oneself (as in jumping or sprinting), or to throw an object.
Night Vision: The ability to see under low-light conditions.
Peripheral Vision: The ability to see objects or movement of objects to one's side when the eyes are looking ahead.
Stamina: The ability to exert yourself physically over long periods of time without getting winded or out of breath.
Glare Sensitivity: The ability to see objects in the presence of a glare or bright lighting.
Speed of Limb Movement: The ability to quickly move the arms and legs.
Sound Localization: The ability to tell the direction from which a sound originated.
Spatial Orientation: The ability to know your location in relation to the environment or to know where other objects are in relation to you.
Dynamic Strength: The ability to exert muscle force repeatedly or continuously over time. This involves muscular endurance and resistance to muscle fatigue.

Tools Used by Materials Scientist

Accelerometers
Annealing ovens
Atomic absorption AA spectroscopes
Atomic force microscopes
Auger electron spectrometers
Backscatter detectors
Ball mills
Ball-on-disk tribometers
Blungers
Box furnaces
Capacitance manometers
Capillary rheometers
Charge-coupled device CCD cameras
Cold isostatic presses
Computerized numerical control CNC machining centers
Cone viscometers
Contact angle goniometers
Creep testing equipment
Crystal growers
Desktop computers
Diamond wafering saws
Dielectric spectrometers
Differential scanning calorimeters
Differential thermal analyzers
Digital oscilloscopes
Dilatometers
Double push rod dilatometers
Dynamic actuators
Dynamic light scattering equipment
Dynamic mechanical analyzers DMA
Electrode furnaces
Electrolytic etching machines
Ellipsometers
Erosion testers
Extruding machines
Field emission scanning electron microscopes
Fourier transform infrared FTIR spectrometers
Freeze dryers
Fume hoods
Function generators
Gamma ray spectrometers
Gas chromatograph mass spectrometers GC-MS
Glove box systems
Grinding spindles
High vacuum evaporation systems
High-speed cutoff saws
High-vacuum manifolds
Horizontal tube furnaces
Hot isostatic presses
Hot mounting presses
Hydraulic presses
Imaging ellipsometers
Impact testers
Induction furnaces
Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometers ICP-MS
Industrial computed tomography CT scanners
Injection molding machines
Interferometric microscopes
Ion analyzers
Laboratory analytical balances
Laboratory water purification systems
Laptop computers
Laser interferometers
Linear variable differential transformers LVDT
Load cells
Macrohardness testers
Manual grinders
Metal evaporation chambers
Metallographic microscopes
Microcalorimeters
Microscope digital cameras
Mobile mass spectrometers
Mossbauer spectroscopes
Muffle furnaces
Multisample autoclaves
Nanoscope atomic force microscopes
Neutron reflectometers
Nitrogen furnaces
Optical compound microscopes
Optical profilometers
Peltier cooled solid-state detectors
Personal computers
Petrographic microscopes
Plasma arc melting furnaces
Plate viscometers
Pore sizers
Potentiostats
Profilometers
Programmable logic controllers PLC
Pulverizers
Quartz crystal microbalances
Quartz crystal thickness monitors
Raman scattering spectroscopes
Reactive ion etchers RIE
Rotational viscometers
Safety glasses
Safety goggles
Salt spray chambers
Scanning electron microscopes SEM
Scanning Kelvin probes
Scanning probe microscopes SPM
Scanning tunneling microscopes STM
Scratch testers
Screw injection molding machines
Secondary ion mass spectrometers SIMS
Sedigraphs
Semi-microbalances
Semiautomatic grinders
Servohydraulic test machines
Shaker ball mills
Slurry abrasion testers
Sonic modulus testers
Spectrofluorimeters
Spectrophotometers
Spectrum analyzers
Sputter deposition systems
Static actuators
Stereo microscopes
Stylus profilometers
Swaging tools
Tape casters
Thermal gravimetric analyzers
Thermal spray torches
Theta-theta diffractometers
Titanium autoclaves
Transmission electron microscopes TEM
Tube furnaces
Ultra high temperature furnaces
Ultra microbalances
Ultraprecision lathes
Ultrasonic analyzers
Ultrasonic cleaners
UV exposure chambers
Vibrating sample magnetometers
Vibratory polishers
X ray diffractometers
X ray generators

Technology Skills required for Materials Scientist

Accelrys Materials Studio
Advanced Chemistry Development Analytical Laboratory
ANSYS LS-DYNA
ANSYS Multiphysics
Bruker AXS EVA
Bruker AXS LEPTOS
Bruker AXS TOPAS
Chempute Software HSC Chemistry
CrystalMaker
Dassault Systemes Abaqus
Email software
GAMESS-US
General Structural Analysis System GSAS
Hypertext markup language HTML
IBM SPSS Statistics
International Centre for Diffraction Data ICDD DDView
Maplesoft Maple
Materials Data Incorporated Jade
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Office software
Microsoft PowerPoint
Microsoft Word
Multichannel microelectrode analyzer MMA software
National Instruments LabVIEW
Olympus Image Analysis
PANalytical X'Pert Data Collector
PANalytical X'Pert Epitaxy
PWscf
Python
R
RIETAN
SolidWorks COSMOSWorks
Stewart Computational Chemistry MOPAC
The MathWorks MATLAB
VAMP/VASP
Web browser software
Wolfram Research Mathematica

US Universities

How to become Materials Scientist in 2024