Austin started as a University which supported the local petroleum and petrochemical industry and has built a great reputation locally by doing this. With a shift in the dominance of petrochemicals and the rise of electronics the industrial support base of the Department has seen a shift, although there is still a strong influence of the oil industry.

In 1983 - 1987 a major change in funding occurred. There was a move from single investigator awards to funding for Centres in Engineering. With Sheldon Friendlander taking the lead they were awarded Centres by the US Environmental Protection Agency; the State of Los Angeles; and the NSF. All research related to environmental issues. Junior Faculty were given senior positions in the Centre and the opportunity to run projects and supervise a number of students.

There remains a strong separation science sector in the Department which has 23 faculty, 17-18 of which are research active, and 7 members of the NAE. There are 600-650 UG students and they award 100-120 BSc degrees/year in Chem. Eng. There are 140-150 graduate students and they award 20-25 PhDs/year + 15-20 MSc's/year. The major research areas are: bioengineering; colloids / surface science / catalysis; electronic materials; environmental engineering; polymers; process modelling and control; separation (classical). Major research centres are in separation, process control and microelectronic materials.

Faculty rotate courses every 4-5 years, but generally teach what they desire. Typically one course per semester is taught, but non-research active staff may teach 4 courses per year. The examples used in UG course are always changing so as to depict actual (changing) problems in industry. There is a new proposal to introduce a three year bacheloriate(sic) degree (not a professional degree) and then require students to do an additional 2 years to attain a professional degree.

With a broad training of UG's in Chemistry, Maths and Physics, students can adapt to different Chemical Engineering specialisations later in the course. The: University has a Centre for Teaching Effectiveness which carries out research / studies on educational issues, the McKetta Centre for Teaching Excellence in Chemical Engineering. The "McKetta Chemical Engineering Education Excellence Fund" resulted from a $1M donation by former Professor John McKetta which raised a further $1.5M from alumni. It is used for services for UG education programme and for new teaching innovations.

Graduate coursework and qualifying exams are used to reinforce UG knowledge. Qualifying exams at end of 1st 6 months or end of 1st year. 85% pass rate. The employment sector of graduating PhDs is: 90% industry, 5% government, 5% academia.

• "The quality of the top 20 graduate students is comparable to the top 20 at Caltech".

For every academic position up to 300 apply and for a recent Assistant Professorship there were 100 applicants for 1 position. All the serious candidates had post doctoral experience. The faculty hiring procedure may be based on importing expertise into a new area (e.g. bioengineering, applied maths), adding strength to an existing area, or to compliment (but not duplicate) an existing area.

Start-up grants from the university and department are in the range $1-300K equipment money, 2 graduate students funded for 2 years; first 2 summer salaries paid and $30K from industry. Those entering from industry or at senior levels need more.

• "I need annual research funding of $1.5M - no start up package will help at this level. "

The pressure on faculty from the tenure process results in a wide variety of reactions.

• "I work from 7am to 8 pm (five days a week) and part of Sunday. "
• "There is a lot of resistance to trying to get money for new ideas. Tenure prevents assistant professors from doing risky research"
• "Unwritten rule that when you work in academia it is key to work in a different area to research supervisor."
• "No attention is paid to where funding came from. The more the better. What really counts is number of students, papers (still a paper chase since tenure is not reviewed by experts, they simply count the number of publications). For each piece of work carried out - 3 papers are produced."
• "Tenure requirements should be modified where there are extra "complexities" such as tissue engineering."
• "Require a blend of different funding sources (NSF, DOE, industry) for tenure."
• "Post tenure all resources dried up, i.e. all funding from NSF and it all dried up at the same time, large group of students and hence there were problems with finances. The lesson is to maintain diversity of research, one major sponsor and many smaller sponsors. Bias towards many medium sized grants."
• "Possible improvements to tenure could include 10 year probation, and 10 year contracts for everyone."
• "To gain tenure you must graduate 1 PhD student, publish ~ 6 papers, hold one major research grant, and have reasonable teaching evaluations."

These are in:

• Atmospheric chemistry; environmental data analysis; multiphase fluid mechanics;
• Use of artificial neural networks for fault diagnosis and data rectification process; system identification process modelling; sensor validation;
• Control and optimisation of chemical reactors; catalysis (surface chemistry and kinetics;
• Separations; Membrane material science and separations;
• Protein design and production (protein engineering; gene expression); tissue and cell migration neural and vascular tissue engineering;
• Polymers and glass ceramics (polymer blends, block copolymers, thin films, polymer interfaces, polymer melt dynamics, relaxation processes in inorganic glasses) ; statistical thermodynamics of bulk and surface properties of polymer liquids;
• Microelectronics processing and material science electrochemistry; separations and microelectronics processing chemistry of electronic materials;

Initiatives have come through the recognition of needs, e.g. in electronic materials. This developed when Texas Instruments (now TI) helped place a Professor in the Department in ‘84 to develop this field which was seen to need chemical engineers. Industrial "seed" money encouraged new people to enter research area. Then an NSF (multidisciplinary) grant was requested for an Electronic Material Centre: It was given $2.1M/yr by NSF + $200K matching funds from industry. This in turn attracted new researchers. The major advantage of the Centre was stability as the programme could be funded until the end of a 10-11 year horizon. Projects are defined broadly enough for flexibility and allow new research ideas to evolve. Clean room facilities for microelectronics are so expensive to buy and maintain it’s better to collaborate with industry which has the facilities.

The Separations Research Programme has 35 industrial sponsors. Sponsors give $25K per year each, 25% of which is pooled together and spent on joint sponsor interests, the remainder on individual investigators. No proprietary research is carried out. SRP has no government funding: NSF funding is very difficult for "classical engineering". There is some University help with the purchase of multimedia equipment for visualisation, e.g. tomography in a distillation column. This area of classical chemical engineering is healthy yet reflects the difficulty of funding such work from government.

The Texas -Wisconsin Modelling Control Consortium –is funded by 18 companies ($20 - 30K/year) and is the major source of research funding in process control, optimisation and modelling. It was initiated when Jim Rawlings moved to Wisconsin. No matching funds are given by the University but the University does not charge overheads(typically 51%). The Consortia does not operate with deliverables or formal contracts but 50% of research work is on areas dictated by board of industrialists.

There are several options at Texas.

• The Department can provide funds through: (i) "available University fund", i.e. an endowment from the "permanent University fund" generated through overheads, (ii) overheads from externally generated income (typically $6M for Chemical and Petroleum Engineering). (iii)Strong alumni support (~ 75% of Industrial Advisory Panel consists of Alumni); several alumni activities per year. This provides a fund of useful 'free' money much used for studentships. (iv) Industry will pay 10K to 15K as sign-up bonuses to PhD's taking up employment with them and this is free money.
• Feasibility funds are also available from NSF funded Centres in the University. These are popular as Government agency awards are difficult to obtain and require more paper work and responsibility.
• The Texas Advanced Technology Programme (state funding available as both fundamental and technology grant: it has a 10% success rate).

There has been a large increase in multi-disciplinary work in past 10-15 years due to complexity of problems to be addressed. This is more feasible in large Universities where it is easier to establish a critical mass. As funding becomes more competitive the current inefficiencies will become more troublesome. Since only one proposal funded in 30 this may lead to a reduction in number of research departments. Inter-disciplinary funding is however thought easier to obtain than PI Grants if the basic criteria can be met (although only 10% of NSF funds goes to such Centres).

In putting a programme together for an interdisciplinary proposal, core people are identified, which may involve faculty from 4-5 departments. It is normal for Chemical Engineers to "take control of programme". Chemical engineers have a large role to play in biotechnology, solid state electronics, new materials , chemical vapour deposition processes. It is interesting that chemical engineers avoided research in electronics in the past because of the jargon, and because of the perception that the work involved the manufacture of "devices". There is an energy barrier.

• "switching from conventional Chem. Eng. to electronic materials was quite hard, I learnt through courses."

Diversification of chemical engineering started with new people risking things - start up packages can help this process if there is motivation. Graduate students can move from lab to lab to learn new skills. Joint appointments help the process.

• "I hold a joint appointment in Chem. Eng. and Molecular Biology."

D.T. Allen, R.T. Bonnecaze, T.F. Edgar, J.G. Ekerdt, R.B. Eldridge, G. Georgiou, P. Green, D.M. Himmelblau, D.R. Lloyd.B. Mullins, S.J. Qin, I.C. Sanchez, C.E. Schmidt, I. Trachtenberg. W Koros.