Research Fields Summary
Many U.S. chemical engineering departments have moved away from research in process engineering and chemical engineering science. Where process systems analysis is still practiced it has moved towards batch processing and materials processing. Chemical engineering science now incorporates analysis at the molecular level and exploits new scientific tools.
In the US, it is thought that the future of chemical engineering research lies at the interfaces between it and other disciplines, so that it can support emerging industries. New fields of activity, little practised in the UK, include molecular modelling, metabolic engineering, polymer and electronic materials, and their manufacture and properties.
A "fairy-ring" phenomenon has occurred where the discipline has exploded to the edges leaving the initial core (unit operations and process systems) denuded of research. Most research is now in the fringe areas where the interaction with other disciplines is greatest. It is also the area where there is the greatest growth of companies.
In a direct comparison of the activity between leading US and UK departments, it is notable that modelling the in US is more focused on the molecular scale, whilst the UK is focused on process systems and transport. The UK is more active in particle technology (for which the US recognises the UK as world leaders), whilst the US is more active in all areas of materials. In biochemical engineering, the emphases in the US are cellular processes and tissue engineering; whilst the UK is primarily concerned with bioprocess engineering. In areas of fundamental chemical engineering, the areas of concentration seem to be quite different.
Electronic materials processing by solid state chemistry and physics is heavily researched by US chemical engineers, but more so by chemists and physicists in the UK. In the US, whilst chemists and physicist do this research, they are focused on the phenomena rather than the applications and product design.
Environmental chemical engineering is similar in both countries but there is perhaps more on atmospheric chemistry modelling in the US. The UK is generally more active in environmental chemical engineering than the US.
The driving forces for multidisciplinary activity may have started with a few individuals and then moved to the funding agencies, who drove the majority forward. Now the US regards the variety of disciplines of chemical engineering staff as a major strength. They believe also that the majority still benefit from a chemical engineering basic training, which helps them to apply these techniques to other fields and novel problems.
In the USA, chemical engineers try to learn and apply new tools which have been developed by the sciences for fundamental study, and then bring these tools into their own laboratories. The future chemical engineer will start with the basic chemical engineering core tools and extend them with a variety of new science tools to have a wider and more versatile approach to problem solving. The strength lies in the focus of the engineer on application and product development, and not in examining the fundamental properties of matter.
The new emphases in the USA have helped them to obtain substantial support from growing high technology industries where job prospects are still increasing, and they are less reliant on the more mature traditional chemical engineering industries where job prospects seem static or declining.
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