Currently the Centre has 7 active faculty members, 1 emeritus faculty member and 6 associate faculty members from other departments, including one honorary professor. Faculty members who have recently retired after many years of distinguished service continue to serve in various honorary capacities as well. In the past ten years, MRC faculty members have churned out 51 Ph. D. and 22 M.Sc. (Eng.) graduates, our alumni, who now occupy responsible positions in all strata of society on an international level. Currently the Centre has a total strength of about 50 students from all corners of the country and from diverse academic backgrounds reflecting its interdisciplinary nature.

Peer reviewed publications are the products by which any research entity is ultimately evaluated. In this area, in the last 5 years, the Centre has produced more than 500 publications in various prestigious international journals and ranks among the most prolific departments at the Institute. Funding for the research that goes in to making these papers are obtained from government agencies, public and private industry and consultancy projects. Such funding is also used to buy new equipment and upgrade existing facilities.

"Basic science to device prototypes" aptly sums up the research activities at MRC. Areas in which the Centre is currently active include the emerging field of nanomaterials, electroceramics, electro-optic functional materials, thermo-electric materials, structural ceramics and compound semiconductors. Faculty members are involved in all aspects of research, right from theoretical modeling, to processing these materials in diverse forms such as single crystals of various dimensions, thin films, nanowires, quantum dots and sintered polycrystals to studying their structure-property correlationships by various advanced characterization techniques, to fabricating working devices either in the Centre itself or in collaboration with various institutions in India and abroad.

Looking forward, the Centre envisions being a pivotal player in the interdisciplinary interaction between physicists, chemists, biologists, mechanical engineers, electrical and electronics engineers, among others, to push the frontiers of scientific understanding and enable new technology.