Deportment of Material Science and Engineering (MSE), one of young departments at Tsinghua University, was created in 1988 by merging materials-related parts from Departments of Chemical Engineering, Engineering Physics, and Mechanical Engineering at Tsinghua. Since then, the MSE at Tsinghua has grown, and become a top MSE department in the materials field around China based on its academic program, its highly regarded faculty, and the high caliber of its students. The MSE department involves the classic materials fields of metals, ceramics and composites science in combination with fundamental disciplines like solid state physics and chemistry. Since no individual has the necessary breadth of knowledge in all of these fields, the MSE department has adopted a multidisciplinary approach to research and education. The MSE Department of Tsinghua offers on interdisciplinary graduate program in Materials Science and Engineering.

There are currently 98 people in the MSE department, including two Academicians of Chinese Academy of Science, two Academicians of Chinese Academy of Engineering, 50 full and associate professors. The number of post-doctors and visiting scholars mainly from other institutions around China is over 40. There are 366 undergraduates, 185 master graduates, and 150 Ph.D. graduates.

Faculty and student research ranges from the purely scientific to applied studies and involves perspectives of chemistry, physics, electronics, and biology. The current research areas of the faculty in the MSE department includes: (1) materials in information technology; (2) materials in health and biotechnology; (3) materials in energy and environment; (4) materials in transportation and security; (5) nanomaterials; and (6) computational materials science. The MSE department has close collaborations with other departments on campus. In fact, in order to enhance such collaborations, on interdisciplinary research school, School of Materials Science and Engineering, was created in 1997 based on the MSE department. This research School brings together the faculty in MSE department with a number of materials-related faculty in the Departments of Chemical Engineering, Physics, and Chemistry.

The MSE department is organized into a few cutting-edge research laboratories and centers, including State Key Laboratory of New Ceramics and Fine Processing, Key Laboratory of Advanced Materials sponsored by the Education ministry of China, Central Laboratory sponsored by the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Materials Division of State Key Laboratory of Tribology, and Teaching Laboratory, and a Bainite-Steel Technology Transfer Center supported by the State Science and Technology Ministry. These research and teaching laboratories are furnished with state-of-the-art equipments for various materials research activities from materials processing to characterization and analysis, and high-level professional training. The Department occupies over 17,000 square meters of lab space which is used by hundreds of researchers, including faculty, research scientists, graduate students, and undergraduate researchers.

Annual research budget in the MSE department is around 40 millions in Chinese dollars, mostly from Chinese funding agencies such as the State Science and Technology Ministry, National Natural Science Foundation of China, the State Education Ministry, as well as industries. Annually, members of the Department publish many archival papers and patents. Up to now the department has owned over 80 patents. Since 1994, the total number of the publications by the faculty in the MSE department has ranked No.1 among Tsinghua University from the SCI index database (ISI Web of Science), and reached up to nearly 390 in 2002. In recent years, both faculty and students have received important national and international awards and recognitions.