Prof Ken Evans holds the Chair of Materials Engineering. He is also the Co-Director of Exeter Advanced Technologies, incorporating Exeter Advanced Technologies (X-AT) and the Centre for Additive Layer Manufacturing. His research is on the theoretical and experimental investigation of novel materials, including their processing, fabrication, structure and properties and in their engineering and industrial applications. He has published over 250 research papers and twelve patents.

Prof. Evans is an acknowledged international expert on auxetic materials. These unusual materials exhibit a negative Poisson's ratio (i.e. they expand laterally when stretched). This behaviour has a fundamental influence on the mechanical properties of these materials, with many possible applications, including health, protection and sports applications. Areas of interest include such diverse topics as blast mitigation fabrics, synthetic skin, 'smart' materials, structural honeycombs and foams and open framework ceramics such as zeolites.

Other major areas of interest include additive-layer manufacturing, sustainable materials processing (e.g. recycling of composites) and mechanical metamaterials that exhibit a wide range of unusual properties including negative Poisson's ratios, negative thermal expansion, negative linear compressibility and negative stiffness.