The AMIR Master program focuses on the raw material value chain, with particular emphasis on recycling. The two main objectives are:
Semesters 1 and 2
The first year of the Master program takes place at the University of Bordeaux in partnership with the research and technology organization, Tecnalia. Students learn about general and technical aspects of the raw material value chain (general chemistry, material science, lifecycle of materials) as well as about the main outcomes of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT): sustainability, intellectual transformation, value judgments (ethical, scientific and sustainability challenges), creativity, innovation, leadership and entrepreneurship.
Semesters 3 and 4
The third semester (Master 2) is dedicated to a specialization in one of the partner universities. This part of the program offers the possibility to follow selected advanced materials classes for various applications (energy, e-mobility - magnets, transport, environments - catalysis, etc.).
The specializations are:
The program is completed with a three to six months’ internship (Master thesis).
The AMIR program benefits from a strong academic, research and industrial network.
After graduation, students are fully prepared to integrate the working environment as professionals in the recycling sector (process optimization, materials design, plant administration, project management, etc.) whether it be in the industrial field or governmental organizations. Possible sectors include: information and communication technologies, building construction, energy, machinery tools, mobility.
Graduates also obtain the necessary skills and knowledge to set up their own company or work in sales and marketing.
Finally, further doctoral studies are another possibility and students may apply for Ph.D. programs in Europe, including those offered in the framework of the European Multifunctional Materials Institute (EMMI : http://www.emmi-materials.eu).
Visit our website for more information on fees, scholarships, postgraduate loans and other funding options to study Materials Engineering at Swansea University - 'Welsh University of the Year 2017' (Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2017).
This MRes degree includes modules covering a range of areas within the Materials discipline, which are linked to the College of Engineering’s main research strengths of aerospace materials, environmental materials and steel technology.
Through this course in Materials Engineering, you will be provided with training and experience in a broad range of topic areas, including metallurgy and materials selection, aerospace materials, recycling techniques, and modern business management issues and techniques.
The Materials Engineering course will provide you with the depth of knowledge and breadth of abilities to meet the demands of the international materials industry.
Combination of taught modules (60 credits) and a research thesis, which presents the outcome of a significant research project (120 credits) over 12 months full-time study. An MRes (Master of Research) provides relevant training to acquire the knowledge, techniques and skills required for a career in industry or for further research.
Modules on the Materials Engineering programme can vary each year but you could expect to study:
Strategic Project Planning
Communication Skills for Research Engineers
Aerospace Materials Engineering
Materials Recycling Techniques
Environmental Analysis and Legislation
Physical Metallurgy of Steel
MSc Research Thesis
This degree is accredited by the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3).
This degree is accredited as meeting the requirements for Further Learning for a Chartered Engineer (CEng) for candidates who have already acquired an Accredited CEng (Partial) BEng(Hons) or an Accredited IEng (Full) BEng/BSc (Hons) undergraduate first degree.
Accreditation is a mark of assurance that the degree meets the standards set by the Engineering Council in the UK Standard for Professional Engineering Competence (UK-SPEC). An accredited degree will provide you with some or all of the underpinning knowledge, understanding and skills for eventual registration as an Incorporated (IEng) or Chartered Engineer (CEng). Some employers recruit preferentially from accredited degrees, and an accredited degree is likely to be recognised by other countries that are signatories to international accords.
Our new home at the innovative Bay Campus provides some of the best university facilities in the UK, in an outstanding location.
Engineering at Swansea University provides state-of-the-art facilities specific to Materials Engineering.
- Comprehensive computer systems for specialist and general purposes.
- World-leading equipment for characterisation of the mechanical properties of metallic, ceramic, polymeric and composite materials.
- Extensive range of laboratories housing scanning electron microscopes with full microanalysis and electron backscatter diffraction capabilities.
Through this Materials Engineering scheme, you will be provided with the detailed technical knowledge and experience required for a successful career at a technical or management level within the modern steel industry.
At the end of the course, you will have a higher level qualification along with crucial experience of industry allowing you to more quickly enter into the world of work and contribute fully to this important sector.
The internationally leading materials research conducted at Swansea is funded by prestigious organisations including:
Rolls-Royce
Airbus
Tata Steel
Rolls-Royce
The Institute of Structural Materials at Swansea is a core member of the Rolls-Royce University Technology Centre in Materials.
This venture supports a wide ranging research portfolio with a rolling value of £6.5 million per annum addressing longer term materials issues.
Airbus
Over £1m funding has been received from Airbus and the Welsh Government in the last three years to support structural composites research and development in the aerospace industry and to support composites activity across Wales.
Tata Steel
Funding of over £6 million to continue our very successful postgraduate programmes with Tata Steel.
Other companies sponsoring research projects include Akzo Nobel, Axion Recycling, BAE Systems, Bayer, Cognet, Ford, HBM nCode, Jaguar Land Rover, Novelis, QinetiQ, RWE Innogy, Timet, TWI (Wales), as well as many smaller companies across the UK.
These industrial research links provide excellent opportunities for great research and employment opportunities.
The Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 ranks Engineering at Swansea as 10th in the UK for the combined score in research quality across the Engineering disciplines.
World-leading research
The REF shows that 94% of research produced by our academic staff is of World-Leading (4*) or Internationally Excellent (3*) quality. This has increased from 73% in the 2008 RAE.
Research pioneered at the College of Engineering harnesses the expertise of academic staff within the department. This ground-breaking multidisciplinary research informs our world-class teaching with several of our staff leaders in their fields.
Highlights of the Engineering results according to the General Engineering Unit of Assessment:
Research Environment at Swansea ranked 2nd in the UK
Research Impact ranked 10th in the UK
Research Power (3*/4* Equivalent staff) ranked 10th in the UK
Visit our website for more information on fees, scholarships, postgraduate loans and other funding options to study Materials Engineering at Swansea University - 'Welsh University of the Year 2017' (Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2017).
With our main research strengths of aerospace materials, environmental materials and steel technology, Swansea University provides an excellent base for your research as a MSc by Research student in Materials Engineering.
Swansea is one of the UK’s leading centres for Materials Engineering in teaching and research. The internationally leading materials research conducted at Swansea is funded by prestigious organisations. These industrial research links provide excellent research opportunities.
Key research areas within Materials Engineering include:
Design against failure by creep, fatigue and environmental damage
Structural metals and ceramics for gas turbine applications
Grain boundary engineering
Recycling of polymers and composites
Corrosion mechanisms in new generation magnesium alloys
Development of novel strip steel grades (IF, HSLA, Dual Phase, TRIP)
Functional coatings for energy generation, storage and release
MSc by research in Materials Engineering typically lasts one year full-time, two to three years part-time. This is an individual research project written up in a thesis of 30,000 words.
Our new home at the innovative Bay Campus provides some of the best university facilities in the UK, in an outstanding location.
Within Engineering at Swansea University there are state-of-the-art facilities specific to Materials Engineering.
- Comprehensive computer systems for specialist and general purposes.
- World-leading equipment for characterisation of the mechanical properties of metallic, ceramic, polymeric and composite materials.
- Extensive range of laboratories housing scanning electron microscopes with full microanalysis and electron backscatter diffraction capabilities.
The internationally leading materials research conducted at Swansea is funded by prestigious organisations including:
Rolls-Royce
Airbus
Tata Steel
Rolls-Royce
The Institute of Structural Materials at Swansea is a core member of the Rolls-Royce University Technology Centre in Materials.
This venture supports a wide ranging research portfolio with a rolling value of £6.5 million per annum addressing longer term materials issues.
Airbus
Over £1m funding has been received from Airbus and the Welsh Government in the last three years to support structural composites research and development in the aerospace industry and to support composites activity across Wales.
Tata Steel
Funding of over £6 million to continue our very successful postgraduate programmes with Tata Steel.
Other companies sponsoring research projects include Akzo Nobel, Axion Recycling, BAE Systems, Bayer, Cognet, Ford, HBM nCode, Jaguar Land Rover, Novelis, QinetiQ, RWE Innogy, Timet, TWI (Wales), as well as many smaller companies across the UK.
These industrial research links provide excellent opportunities for great research and employment opportunities.
The Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 ranks Engineering at Swansea as 10th in the UK for the combined score in research quality across the Engineering disciplines.
World-leading research
The REF shows that 94% of research produced by our academic staff is of World-Leading (4*) or Internationally Excellent (3*) quality. This has increased from 73% in the 2008 RAE.
Research pioneered at the College of Engineering harnesses the expertise of academic staff within the department. This ground-breaking multidisciplinary research informs our world-class teaching with several of our staff leaders in their fields.
Highlights of the Engineering results according to the General Engineering Unit of Assessment:
Research Environment at Swansea ranked 2nd in the UK
Research Impact ranked 10th in the UK
Research Power (3*/4* Equivalent staff) ranked 10th in the UK
The structure of the program consists of a core of 60 credits, four options of 12 credits, three fixed elective packages of 12 credits, engineering and general interest electives of 12 credits and the Master's thesis of 24 credits. The four options focus on materials families or on application domains: Metals and Ceramics, Polymers and Composites, Materials for Nanotechnology, and Materials for Biomedical Applications. The three fixed elective packages have been designed to help the students in imagining themselves in their future professional environment and thus in developing a career profile: research, production and management. The two latter packages include industrial internships.
The programme is crowned with the 24 credits Master's thesis where the student will apply his/her knowledge to a research topic of choice. These topics are usually embedded in a cutting-edge research project in cooperation with other institutions and/or industrial companies.
This programme is an initial Master's programme and can be followed on a full-time of part-time basis.
Graduates have access to a wide range of engineering sectors. Prominent technical industries such as the automotive, aerospace, energy, microelectronics, and chemical industries and emerging sectors such as nanotechnology, biomaterials and recycling are keen to hire qualified and talented materials engineers. Materials engineers are also well suited for functions as process engineers, materials or product developers, design specialists, quality control engineers or consultants. Graduates with an interest in research can apply for an R&D position or start a PhD. Several alumni have also gone on to start their own companies.
In this programme, leading academics encourage students to think across different disciplines to blend scientific, socioeconomic and policy perspectives for a stronger understanding of sustainability and how it can be achieved. This wider perspective is attractive to organisations which promote sustainable development or seek to reduce humanity’s effect on the environment.
Ensuring the environmental sustainability of society is one of the major challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. How can the needs of the world’s growing population be met without threatening the ecological processes that support human wellbeing?
How can the economy and energy systems be restructured to combat climate change? What policies foster sustainability? How can the necessary changes in the behaviour of organisations and individuals be promoted? This MSc programme explores these and related, topical questions.
This programme is affiliated with the University's Global Environment & Society Academy.
This programme consists of six taught courses, studied over two semesters. Students will also undertake a research project leading to a dissertation of up to 20,000 words.
Compulsory courses typically will be:
Option courses: In consultation with the Programme Director, you will choose from a range of option courses. We particularly recommend:
Courses are offered subject to timetabling and availability and are subject to change.
Students will be equipped to:
This programme prepares students for a wide range of roles within environmental consultancy, national and local government, non-profit organisations, education or research. The choice of option courses and dissertation projects can be tailored towards your chosen career path.
Would you like to know what it’s really like to study at the School of GeoSciences?
Visit our student experience blog where you can find articles, advice, videos and ask current students your questions.
The MSc in Environment and Development (E&D) is an interdisciplinary programme exploring the inter-dependencies between pressing environmental concerns and development pressures. It explores these themes, the disputes around it and practical issues from an informed theoretical perspective, with an abiding concern for social justice claims. Conventional academic approaches focus on development or the environment as separate categories, while this programme looks at socioeconomic development as a socio-ecological and politicoecological process.
In particular this E&D programme focuses on:
Those issues will be studied at the local and national level, but also taking into account the global scale of environmental and development agendas. In many cases the root causes of inequality and poverty, both in the Global South and in the Global North, are driven by regional or global economics far beyond the borders of a particular country, village or region.
The programme will teach you to critically evaluate the multiple dimensions of the relationship between development and the environment. Teaching, fieldwork, group and practical exercises will use examples of relevance to Northern and Southern countries.
The breadth and depth of the School of GeoSciences enables students to explore a variety of environment and development issues relevant to the programme: e.g. biophysical dynamics, food insecurity, environmental governance, river basin management, cultural studies, climate change, multiple scarcities and inequalities, gender and development,etc. Students are challenged to cultivate research thinking that is cross-cutting and globally relevant, but also grounded in cases that focus on particular issues, places or systems, providing insights to effective solutions.
This programme is affiliated with the University's Global Development Academy.
This MSc consists of two semesters of taught courses. Students take two compulsory and four option courses, each a balance of lectures, seminars, workshops and visits, followed by an individual dissertation.
Compulsory courses typically will be:
Option courses:
In consultation with the Programme Director, you will choose from a range of option courses. We particularly recommend:
Courses are offered subject to timetabling and availability and are subject to change.
This programme is suitable for students seeking roles within international and national development agencies, thinktanks, NGOs, environmental consultancies or the private sector, or those going on to PhD research.
Would you like to know what it’s really like to study at the School of GeoSciences?
Visit our student experience blog where you can find articles, advice, videos and ask current students your questions.
This programme will give you a fundamental understanding of the issues affecting the Earth enabling you to play a vital role in devising and enacting strategies to protect and conserve the environment, both in Europe and beyond.
Human activities are recognised as having an increasingly significant effect on the Earth’s biosphere. Our use of natural resources, deforestation, soil erosion, the release of potentially toxic compounds and pathogens, and the increase in greenhouse gases are all examples of pressures that have potentially serious consequences for humanity and other life on Earth.
On this programme you will learn about the issues that face the Earth and gain an in-depth understanding of natural resource management and the processes that give rise to environmental degradation and pollution problems.
It will allow you to play a vital role in planning and putting into action strategies to protect and conserve the environment.
This programme is run in collaboration with Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC).
This programme is affiliated with the University's Global Environment & Society Academy.
This programme involves two semesters of taught courses, which are a balance of lectures, seminars, workshops and visits, plus a research dissertation project of about 16,000 words.
Compulsory courses typically will be:
Option courses:
You will also choose four optional courses^. We particularly recommend the following:
Courses are offered subject to timetabling and availability and are subject to change.
Field trip
Part of this programme is a week-long study tour in spring. Past study tours have been held in France, Greece, Portugal, Israel and Morocco.
Students will:
Our graduates have a solid record in finding employment in the environmental sector while some choose to further their studies through a PhD.
There are also opportunities in consultancy positions and with environmental regulators, government and NGOs.
Would you like to know what it’s really like to study at the School of GeoSciences?
Visit our student experience blog where you can find articles, advice, videos and ask current students your questions.
Ecological Economics focuses on how to make sustainability and environmental management work in practice by applying economic principles.
This programme is run in collaboration with Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC). Graduates with postgraduate training in this area are in greater demand than ever before in business, industry and government.
This programme is affiliated with the University's Global Environment & Society Academy.
Applicants who applied after 12 December 2016 receiving an offer of admission, either unconditional or conditional, may be required to pay a tuition fee deposit. Please see the fees and costs section for more information.
You will learn through lectures, group work, informal group discussion and individual study, as well as the spring study tour. After two semesters of taught courses, you will begin work on your individual dissertations. You will be able to choose from a wide selection of option courses to suit individual interests and career goals.
Compulsory courses typically will be:
Option courses:
In consultation with the Programme Director, you will choose from a range of option courses^. We particularly recommend:
Courses are offered subject to timetabling and availability and are subject to change
Field trip
To experience and understand conflict between ecosystem conservation and human development needs at ground level, this programme typically includes a unique 7-10-day study tour, usually overseas and in the developing world (previous destinations have included South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania).
Being able to identify ecological economic problems, and apply economic principles and methods to solve these problems is increasingly valued by employers.
Our graduates are working in a variety of sectors, including environmental consultancies; international and governmental agencies; NGOs; financial institutions; multinationals; environmental education and research.
Additionally around a quarter of our masters students go on to doctoral research programmes.
Would you like to know what it’s really like to study at the School of GeoSciences?
Visit our student experience blog where you can find articles, advice, videos and ask current students your questions.
Offered as part of the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programme.
Full-time and part-time students study a number of one-week short-course modules comprising lectures, laboratory sessions and tutorials.
The modules cover metals, polymers, ceramics, composites, nanomaterials, bonding, surfaces, corrosion, fracture, fatigue, analytical techniques and general research methods. Each module is followed by an open book assessment of approximately 120 hours.
There is also a materials-based research project, which is made up of the Research Project Planning and the Project modules.
The MSc in Advanced Materials is accredited by the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3) and by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) when a Project is undertaken.
This programme is studied full-time over one academic year and part-time over five academic years. It consists of eight taught modules and a compulsory Project.
Example module listing
The following modules are indicative, reflecting the information available at the time of publication. Please note that not all modules described are compulsory and may be subject to teaching availability and/or student demand.
The programme provides opportunities for students to develop and demonstrate knowledge and understanding, skills, qualities and other attributes in the following areas:
Knowledge and understanding
Intellectual / cognitive skills
Professional practical skills
Key / transferable skills
We often give our students the opportunity to acquire international experience during their degrees by taking advantage of our exchange agreements with overseas universities.
In addition to the hugely enjoyable and satisfying experience, time spent abroad adds a distinctive element to your CV.
