The Department of Mining Engineering and Metallurgy and Materials Science of the UPV/EHU has around 50 people employed on a stable basis, committed to teaching and/or research in 4 different buildings on the Bizkaia and Araba campuses. It assumes primary responsibility for the provision of teaching in the 4 following areas of engineering: Cartographic, Geodesic, and Photogrammetric Engineering, Materials Science, Mining Prospection and Investigation, and Mine Operations. As one of the most traditional engineering departments, its principal mission is the preparation of students in the field of their speciality, aware that at the end of the course the students must have acquired the competencies with which they will be able to develop the profession of engineering to the full.

This Department is committed to its industrial and social environment, in such a way that it has a nexus of collaboration, now sufficiently well consolidated, with productive industry and services, technological centres, associations, administrations and institutions, with a view to achieving acceptable levels of Transfer of Technology (TOT). In consequence of the above, a series of research lines have been formulated, over the years, that have culminated in numerous Doctoral Theses forming part of the different Doctorate Programmes within which the Department participates.