Our goal is to build upon recognized research strengths, including energy production and distribution; transportation and logistics; manufacturing and materials, and accelerate collaborative research in areas such as autonomous systems; sustainable systems and structures; engineering for human health; computing and information; and cyber-physical systems and security.
The University of Kentucky is one of only eight universities in the country with a major medical center featuring six health sciences colleges, and the full spectrum of academic colleges on one continuous campus. The close proximity of such a large range of programs is an incubator for inter- and transdisciplinary initiatives. Discoveries from these collaborations allow our researchers to address the needs of the citizens of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, our nation and our world.
Hastings’ research interests span nanoscale photonic and magnetic devices, nanomanufacturing, and their applications in sensing, energy, and unconventional computing. He has authored more than 75 peer-reviewed journal articles, delivered over 100 conference presentations and invited talks, and holds seven U.S. patents. His work has been supported by more than $30 million in research awards, including federal, state, foundation and industry funding. Hastings has served as principal investigator on over half of these awards.
Hastings is a recipient of both the NSF CAREER award and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Young Faculty Award, and has been recognized with the College of Engineering Excellence in Research award and University Research Professorship. He also co-founded IOPtic, Inc., a medical device startup focused on vision technologies.
Alexandra F. Paterson’s research paves the way for more reliable and innovative technologies that could benefit health care, manufacturing and everyday life. For her work, she has earned two prestigious national awards for early-career faculty: the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award.
Alexandre Martin, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) in the Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering at the University of Kentucky, has been awarded the NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal — one of the highest honors given to individuals outside the agency.
The University of Kentucky Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering is pleased to announce the appointment of J. Todd Hastings, Ph.D. as associate dean for research and graduate studies, effective July 1, 2025.
Brent Seales, heritage science chair in the Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering at the University of Kentucky, has been awarded a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant as part of an international team seeking to unlock the secrets of the Herculaneum scrolls.
SPARK Lab researchers within the Power and Energy Institute of Kentucky (PEIK) and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Kentucky Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering received a best student demo award at the 2025 IEEE International Conference on Electric Machines and Drives (IEMDC), which was held in Houston, TX.
Engineering education leaders from across the Southeastern Conference (SEC) gathered at the University of Kentucky for the annual SEC Engineering Leadership Meeting. The meeting welcomed more than 100 participants, including engineering deans, associate deans, department chairs and other higher educational leaders.
What once started as a mission to test an aircraft on Mars has turned into research using drones at the University of Kentucky that now helps engineers predict tornadoes.
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.
