Changing the Culture
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In Dec '87 the US National Research Council published the Amundson Report. It drew the country's attention to the globalisation of the heavy chemicals industry - the mainstay of the chemical engineering profession. Now these products and processes were moving to the developing world. New products were being developed, but the innovations cycle was becoming shorter. Chemical engineers had to move into research at the product development and improvement stage, and not simply focus on process improvement. This would mean learning more science, and becoming at least bicultural between disciplines. Living at what might be termed the edge of chemical engineering. they have achieved the shift demanded by the Amundson report.top |
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Globalisation applies to research more so than in perhaps any other field - information passes quickly across national boundaries. Research has to be of the highest quality to be effective and UK industry, like all others, will naturally make use of the best research results wherever they were produced. UK chemical engineering research still mainly serves the needs of its traditional large scale industries. The emerging industries do not find it meets their research needs for which they turn principally to the US academic community.top |
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Perceiving this problem from the standpoint of extensive experience of both systems, I sought funds to take a group of younger academics to the US to examine chemical engineering research activity in some of their most highly regarded universities. I make no apology for concentrating on the best as benchmarking must aspire to the highest standards. We have glossed over the problems of the many because theirs’ is not a model we aspire to. Not all UK departments can achieve the highest standards but several can and must.top |
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The UK research community still looks back to its heyday of the 50’s and 60’s, and produces people, research, and ideas valued by the mature and traditional chemical industries. The community is not producing results, Ph.D. graduates or background expertise, which are valued by the most rapidly growing and newest sections of the process industries. These are the industries focusing on consumer products, novel foods, medical delivery systems, formulating new materials, manipulating complex fluids to name a few. These are the industries where jobs are growing fastest, where innovation rules, and markets are growing fastest. top |
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Chemical engineering must now look at the design of products, conception of the manufacturing process and working out how to meet customer needs quickly and flexibly to cope with a rapid turnover of new innovative products. Many products will never reach large scale and never need scale-up skills. We will become at least bicultural. We will apply a reverse design concept starting with customer need, then product, then process and find what research is needed. This we will develop with scientists. Our role is working out how to handle complexity and the integration of many components in a quantitative fashion. This is what the US does.top |
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I have spent 12 years in the North American university system, and nearly 30 years in the UK one. I observed that the UK resists change, whilst the US embraces it. In the modern world, change is continuous and we must regard continuous change as the normal way of operating, and so procedures need adjusting to cope with novelty. It is always going to be true that those at the forefront of change processes are going to have things less well worked out, less well documented and will operate with a higher risk factor. If the potential gains are high the risks are worth taking but failures must be expected and accepted. We need to produce a chance to get things wrong in order to have the chance to get things right. Since many things will be done which are wrong in a risk-taking research environment, we need ways to offer many different pathways to success. We need inclusivity, diversity, and many options of operation.top |
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I was determined to share my perception of the US with people with few prejudices, and with the time to make changes in their careers. I decided it would be a good idea to take a team of young high-flying UK academics from the best of our research departments to the USA to learn from the system in place there. The EPSRC fortunately agreed with this concept, and so we set out to build a team and take them to visit as many of the best US departments of chemical engineering as seemed reasonable. Participants were selected from the 4, 5 and 5* rated departments by asking chairmen to nominate candidates. We also strengthened the biochemical engineering contingent and added selected candidates nominated by the EPSRC. top |
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We found a different world in the USA. We found techniques for funding interdisciplinary research which work; we listened to the difficulties they had getting over the barriers (just like those we face here and now). We found out that they now train their Ph.Ds in even more cross-disciplinary ways. We found many of the same problems of inadequate funding, over-specialised programmes, heavy teaching loads, long working hours, but still they seemed motivated. They were happy in their departments, and fulfilled in their work. They were optimistic, successful and they were well paid. <top><Contents> |
Research at the Edge -
John Howell, Bath - July 1999