Chemical engineering at CalTech exists within the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering which facilitates close interaction with chemistry in both teaching and research. CalTech perceives itself as a research training institute: "Our central goal is teaching students how to conduct innovative research and communicate the results." This is reflected in the equal numbers of u/g and p/g students and the favourable staff-student ratio.

The Department of Chemical Engineering is a friendly department according to some of the faculty members. One of the post docs remarked that there was a highly competitive research atmosphere within the department to the extent of being counter-productive. One member of faculty was also aggrieved by this atmosphere, claiming that another member of faculty had received preferential treatment in the competition for tenure.

Scholarship in research is highly prized and demanded of all members of the department, both staff and students. The guaranteed 12 month salary for all faculty, which is unusual in US academia, allows faculty to focus on basic research activities. There is substantial support for young faculty through start up packages and internal research programmes funded by private endowments and donations from industry.

CalTech boasts 22 Nobel laureates and considers itself to be a research training institute: "Our central goal is teaching students how to conduct innovative research and communicate the results." As a result there is a high proportion of p/g students (numbers of p/g and u/g students are the same). In addition there is a favourable ratio of staff/students which allows research mentoring (staff/student > 1/10 for either u/g or p/g).

The faculty tries to foster a research ethos at an u/g level. U/g students carry out 2 or 3 "real" research projects and there is close mentoring of u/g research. The faculty in chemical engineering claimed that they have one of the highest science content of any undergraduate programme in the USA, although this was to the detriment of engineering education. Interdisciplinary work is "seen as the key at CalTech" and the departmental philosophy on teaching was that "the most important things are the fundamentals". What was clear was that u/g and p/g education had moved completely away from unit operations and design.

PhD students receive mentoring not just from their supervisor but from other advisors from within and outside the department. There is a demanding programme for 1st year grad students in terms of course requirements..

There are ten faculty in chemical engineering with seven being full professors. Most of the faculty have chemical engineering undergraduate training although a few of them have chemistry or physics.

The three younger faculty all had postdoctoral training before becoming professor. One in the Max Planck Institute, another at Bell Labs in order gain experience in plasma, the last at at Exxon and UCLA in the area of statistical mechanics.

The atmosphere was reported as congenial but highly competitive. Some of the younger faculties were concerned about this competitive atmosphere, particularly in relation to the tenure system (see below). The publication rate amongst young staff was around 5-8 journal papers per year.

New young faculty in chemical engineering receive start up packages of the order of $250,000 which means they can get their laboratories up and running very quickly. This sum has grown significantly over the last few years. One young member of faculty was hired out of her PhD and then went to do a postdoc, but having received the start-up package she was able to build up her lab and also start to apply for awards and research grants while a postdoc. New faculty also receive four years p/g student support.

The primary means of assessing suitability for tenure is letters of recommendation/support from peers in the USA and international researchers. In this way it is intended to measure the impact of publications and other research outputs. In order to achieve such an impact, faculty members, particularly the younger faculty, spend a large proportion of their time (up to 1 week every month) at national and international conferences. Faculty members were also required to be creative and stake out new and independent areas of research in order to be classed as a scholar. Achieving tenure is far less dependent upon the level of fundraising from industry, the number of research grants, contribution to teaching, and administrative duties. There is a great deal of pressure on staff for the first few years in post before tenure.

One young member of faculty who recently became an associate professor said she routinely worked more than 12 hours a day, 6or 7 days a week, although she was working less more recently. She felt that she had had close mentoring to keep her informed of the requirements for tenure, although this was not the case with other young faculty members. An assistant professor felt somewhat aggrieved by the tenure system and claimed that despite having a significant publication record and achieving impact with his research, another member of faculty had received preferential treatment in the competition for tenure. In addition he felt that he had not had enough mentoring (although people were approachable in the department, he thought it would be a sign of weakness to ask for help). The third young member of faculty also had reservations about the tenure system, claiming it is a very secretive process, there is no mentor system, there is too much pressure and competition which is counter-productive. With regard to publications, he felt there is an emphasis on quantity not quality, which stifles the depth of research, and there is a de-emphasis on teaching.

All staff at CalTech receive a guaranteed 12 month salary, which is unusual compared to most other universities in the USA. This allows much more time to be devoted to basic research activities rather than having to work on industrial projects for a summer salary. In addition, teaching and administrative commitments are fairly low – 3 courses per year (one or two of these may be graduate courses, which typically consist of only 5 lectures). P/g students carry out much of the u/g teaching support duties including course marking. These p/g student are funded by teaching assistantships specifically to conduct teaching duties during their first year (as well as studying for their taught course requirements).

CalTech is split into six divisions. Chemical engineering is placed in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering (not within the Division of Engineering and Applied Science). The strong link with chemistry is reflected in the research interests of the faculty in chemical engineering. These interests include biochemical engineering, fluid mechanics and transport processes, polymeric and supramolecular liquids, ceramics and electronic materials, catalysis and chemical sensors, environmental chemical engineering and combustion, aerosols and colloids, and applied mathematics and computational physics.

At CalTech there was an abundance of support to carry out independent and innovative research compared to institutions in the UK. Funds for internal research programmes come from private endowments and donations from industry. For example IBM supports computer infrastructure. Internal research grants have to be applied for and are awarded on a competitive basis. The Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering funds significant numbers of grad students, which allows continuity within individual faculty member’s research programmes. There is also a large internal fund to allow staff to go to conferences.

Other than industrial donations to the university, faculty spend less time soliciting funds from industry to carry out research compared to faculty in most other universities. This is partly due to the fact that staff do not have to seek summer salary, but is also a result of the emphasis on scholarship in basic fundamental research. The faculty boasted a wide distribution of grants from national funding agencies and as with other successful institutions, most of the faculty had received the NSF young presidential investigator award.

When asked to name their peers in the UK, the faculty members at CalTech consistently named academics in science departments in the UK (this was also found at other universities). Some faculty members also claimed that chemical engineering research in the UK was not being done at a fundamental level and was too close to the needs of the chemical industry. It was felt that the UK was highly competitive in terms of research related to large scale processing, e.g. bioprocess engineering rather than biological engineering, and process systems engineering.

Frances Arnold, Julie Kornfield, David Tirrell, Rick Flagan, Zhen-Gang Wang, Costas Giapis, George Gavalas.