The department is part of the College of Chemistry that contains the departments of Chemistry and of Chemical Engineering. Chemical Engineering is about 50 years old. The early research was in the traditional areas of separations, distillation, computer methods, mass transfer and thermodynamics. However, the flavour of chemical engineering changed in the 80s, and in particular, Berkeley was influenced by the new Bay Area industries – semiconductors and biotechnology. It recruited staff accordingly. There are currently 19 faculty members (including 2 new recruits currently doing post-doctoral research). Previously there were 24 staff but numbers were reduced through an early retirement programme.

Graduating students from Berkeley were not being recruited by a contracting petrochemicals industry (e.g. Chevron previously employed 3000 staff now only 300) and were going to the newer industries. This clearly influenced the research direction of the department. Currently the employment of graduating students is 1/3 electronics, 1/3 biotechnology and 1/3 traditional industries. It is now unusual to see students with PhDs going into the petrochemical industry. About a quarter of PhDs go into academia.

The changes in research at Berkeley in the early 90s were also driven by the interactions with the chemists, eg simulation modelling, statistical mechanics, materials, physical chemistry. The interaction with Chemistry is a dominant feature of chemical engineering in this department. As a result of these interactions, the new areas that chemical engineering moved into included: materials (especially soft materials and polymers); simulation; electronics (materials, processing); catalysis (although interest by students is currently waning); biotechnology; and electrochemistry.

It is important to recognise that Tobias started electrochemistry research in chemical engineering in the US, at Berkeley in the 60s. Tobias's students have gone on to become faculty working in electrochemistry in Chemical Engineering departments. One third of processing in the chemical industry is electrochemistry related.

20-30 PhD students are admitted each year (GPA 3.75, GRE 90%), 2-4 leave in the first semester, and then a fraction might leave at the preliminaries stage with a masters degree (after 2-2 1/2 yrs). Direct entry onto the masters programme has the same standard as for doctorate.

In the UC system foreign students cost more and this cost is passed on to the faculty – thus there are only about 2-3 foreign students per year. Costs of a US student are $5-6k/yr, non-US $7.5k/yr

The entire faculty has a say in who is recruited, and also the preferred research areas of the new staff. However, in all cases the most outstanding individual will be hired. Current search is looking for individuals in materials, materials synthesis and characterisation. For an assistant professor vacancy there will be about 250 - 300 applicants of which 5-6 will be interviewed. It is common now for new recruit to spend 1 to 2 years doing a post doc, possibly after being offered the position, since this enables them to change direction from their PhD research, and to think about research proposals.

There are few staff recruited at associate and full professor level. It is usual to hire at the assistant professor level and retain. Thus, the majority of the department is home grown. It is recognised that there are problems of hiring staff due to the high cost of living in the Bay Area. The University does not offer financial help.

Non-chemical engineers are hired as faculty. For example, current staff have first degrees in biology, chemistry and physics. They are expected to teach core chemical engineering courses for example thermodynamics, mass and energy balances and thus work there way into the mainstream curriculum.

• "The motivation for academia is the freedom to pursue own research and ideas, independence. disadvantages are having to find own money."

The start-up package for an experimentalist will be about $200 - 250K for equipment, 6-8 man years support for graduate students, and 6 months summer salary. For a theoretician there will be less funding for equipment but more student time. The start-up funds come from the department (industrial funds) and the University (alumni funds). New recruits teach the same as everyone else; teach 1 course/semester. It is rare to receive a reduced teaching load and there is no possibility of buying out from teaching.

There is little risk of the Berkeley staff failing tenure, because of the time taken at the recruitment stage to get the right person. In order to get tenure assistant professors should focus on more ambitious research areas to make a big "splash". They should work on challenging problems in new and exciting areas. This will lead to high visibility and aid the overall impact of the candidate. Ordinary research will not realise tenure. The number of publications not an issue. There is a trend eg at Yale and Johns Hopkins Universities that only five papers may be submitted to support the case.

At Berkeley new recruits are linked to senior faculty members, there is co-supervision of students and joint publications are encouraged. Lots of interactions are favoured and there is an informal mentoring scheme. However, assistant professors have to establish an independent research area, but this should not stop them from collaborating with colleagues.

• "Tenure is a hurdle, and whilst it is a good idea, it is harder for someone older (40's). At this point it is not a good idea. The impact on that person is too great especially when they have done something else outside academia for 10 - 12 years. They should be appointed at a higher level."
• "Benefits of tenure are the great discipline it develops, and makes people focus early on."
• "Tenure forces assistant professors to establish a presence in 2 to 3 years. This results in a move to specialisation and away from being a generalist."
• "The tenure system makes new people prove themselves, motivation, and discipline. It is harsh and inhumane."
• "Once tenure is awarded it can lead to complacency, i.e. comfort zone."
• "Tenure forces you to have a timetable, and to be visible in community (10 - 12 letters of recommendation are needed), define a research strategy, play safe for some fraction in terms of research. "
• "Due to tenure I did not collaborate much at first. However, in the past 4/5 years I have collaborated. Collaborations bring something different, enable you to learn something new."

Traditional areas have dried up (petroleum and chemical). Now students may not know sufficient to work in a refinery. It is thought that chemical engineering is broader, less focused than chemistry, combining maths, physics, chemical engineering and solving practically oriented problems. ("chemical engineers make more money"). The fields are now those which interface with the sciences as these sentiments show:

• "Engineers have a pedigree more in the sciences, can see the applications and want to move into technology"
• "It is hard to get students interested in properties of fluid mixtures as it is not exciting enough."
• "Process control and systems, process modelling are NOT appreciated in the department. Need for advanced work in PSE, process optimisation, this is needed by industry but when we look for them to recruit to the Faculty their quality is perceived to be lower."
• "Simulation focus has moved more into modelling of molecular phenomena"
• "Berkeley has moved away from process systems – this is a bad thing for the industry"
• "He could take lots of courses to get up to chemical engineering standard."
• "People are not being trained in the area of bioprocessing in USA which industry still requires."
• "Research can be done at either the micro or macroscopic levels. Most people working at molecular level The larger the scale, the greater the ignorance."
• "Chemical engineers contribute quantitative analysis, but do design not just analysis and can cope with ill-defined problems.

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL) is very close to the Berkeley campus. All faculty in chemical engineering have joint appointments with LBL. This provides access to facilities, equipment, personnel and funding. One half of the chemical engineering graduate students get funding from LBL. Staff become adjunct faculty of LBL. This allows them to write proposals which then go DOE (which funds LBL). At the moment this route for funding is less competitive than NIH and NSF. It is possible to get some summer salary from LBL funded grants. Relevant activities at the LBL include a Centre for Advanced Materials, the Human Genome Project and research in surface science and chemistry.

Due to the cost of Journal subscriptions, faculty have cancelled subscriptions and become more focused on which ones to subscribe to.

The comments about working with industry sound familiar to British ears.

• "Industry think they see research as long term, but want a pay off tomorrow not in 5 years time."
• "Industry hears about recent developments but the majority do not have the ability to understand it."
• "Money from industry is now given to support a particular area, more mission oriented, change in US industries attitude ($20K to $100K per year). Issue of having to spend lots of time talking to industry and this is extremely frustrating."
• "US industry SHOULD take more responsibility for training future graduates."
• "Nowadays there is less freedom in academia, it is harder to get money (less industrial funds, short termism on the point of funding agencies"

Patents - University own and license them with some revenue shared with professors.

• "Setting up ones own company is possible-The major barrier is time (so that it does not interfere with faculty commitments."

Harvey Blanch (Department Chair),Scott Lynn, Doug Clark, Elton Cairns, Alan Foss, Susan Muller, John Newman, John Prausnitz, Jeff Reimer.