Princeton University recently celebrated it 250th Anniversary. It houses top students and faculty and particularly top undergraduates. There are only some 4500 undergraduates at Princeton, and a mere 1700 graduate students, surprisingly small for its big reputation. The University prides itself on placing undergraduate education on a par with research and scholarship, and is rewarded by amazing loyalty from its alumni. Its endowment which supports a healthy infrastructure and well-found laboratory, rates just behind the University of Texas and Harvard in size,.

The School is headed by Professor James C. Wei, a long-time Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and a Professor of Chemical Engineering. The recent Anniversary Campaign for Princeton raised $162 million for SEAS projects. Undergraduate engineering education has targeted spending on innovation in teaching ($5m), undergraduate scholarships ($16.5m), Senior Thesis Fund ($4m, discussed later), laboratory and computer endowments ($8m), engineering classroom construction ($30m), and library funds ($3m). On the research side, SEAS has targeted spending for new faculty positions and retention of top internal faculty ($37.5), graduate fellowships aiming to provide institutional support for new graduate students to focus on taught course modules in their first semester, before transferring to teaching or research assistantships. The Computer Science Department has also attracted $12m from the fund to endow new chairs and to expand its research.

On top of this institutional support (from friends of the University in the completed Anniversary Campaign), Sir Gordon Wu, a philantropist alumnus, contributed an additional $35m (to his $65m gift to the Anniversary Campaign). This was set up as a challenge fund to match gifts from other alumni, $1 for every $2 donated up to $500k from any individual donor for focused gifts for endowed positions, fellowships, scholarships, research funds and library gifts.

At various times in the last few decades, the Chemical Engineering Department has rated the first in the country for undergraduate teaching. It perennially places in the top ten for research. The one particular feature that distinguishes Princeton from other Universities is the Senior Thesis, and more broadly long term independent undergraduate research work.

The Department has a chief administrator and several administrative and secretarial staff members. Technicians are shared with other Departments for undergraduate labs, computer systems admin, research, and machine shop work with the Departments share being equivalent to one technician.

The Department Chairman delegates authority on undergraduate matters, represents the Department at the School and University level, engages in faculty development and fund raising.

All undergraduates are required to complete a one year independent project before graduating; most undertake the requirement in the final year, with intense activity in their final semester, typically with a reduced load of modules to focus on the independent project. This Senior Thesis is in addition to a UK-like Design Project, and focuses on some aspect of chemical engineering science, usually a building block in the research programme of a faculty member. As one emeritus professor put it, "The Senior Thesis is an excellent opportunity to explore a risky and innovative line of investigation, too risky to waste graduate student time on. Every other one is publishable, and every single one is useful. If not for the publication, then in developing equipment and experimental protocols for later publications."

Some undergraduates begin their thesis early, with junior independent work, or even paid or voluntary research assistant posts in the summer before their final year. The School of Engineering is so committed to undergraduate research that in conjunction with a rich alumnus, it has endowed a fund for laboratory based senior theses that has now reached multimillion dollar levels in a few months since inception. Another professor confided, "Our undergraduates are our greatest asset. They come pre-selected as motivated, highly talented achievers. In truth they are higher quality than most of our graduate students (who are A-average students from other Universities). The Senior Thesis is really a mini-doctoral thesis, not a Master’s dissertation. The Master’s dissertation is training in the methods of research. The Senior Thesis is independent and original. Of course the students are advised by faculty members, but the serious culture surrounding the Senior Thesis drives the undergraduates to achieve excellent research."

• "Our undergraduates come somehow pre-selected as motivated, highly talented achievers."

Faculty religiously take sabbaticals, usually abroad, and on a more frequent basis than in the UK.

The teaching load is light in terms of numbers and nominal contact hours. The Department provides typically two or three core modules and one or two electives for the junior, senior, and graduate levels per semester. The faculty anecdotally say that they routinely spend many more contact hours in office tutoring sessions with the undergraduates. Since undergraduate teaching is the University focus, and undergraduates pay large fees, they feel compelled to provide individual help when requested.

Princeton maintains a high profile in traditional chemical engineering science subjects, focusing on core competencies like interfacial phenomena at the molecular level, linking polymer synthesis to novel molecular structure and resultant properties, the hydrodynamic and electrical forces intrinsic to complex fluids, the non-linear dynamics of fluidised bed transport, and the non-linear optimisation of process systems, for example. These are difficult problems to make headway in, simply because most of the easy approaches were taken already. There is a view that if chemical engineering as a field is to advance, it must look outward and become more "multidisciplinary." Princeton’s Department certainly encourages multidisciplinary activity, but is also firmly rooted in the core competencies of chemical engineering science. It does not suffice to ignore these competencies else the ability for chemical engineers to contribute a unique perspective to multidisciplinary problems is diminished. Chemical engineering, regardless of the application, is about analysis and synthesis. Neither set of tools can be ignored; competence in both are required in tomorrow’s world.

Clearly Princeton’s SEAS has substantial backing from the "friends of the University." As a counterpoint to this, research sponsorship from private sources at Princeton suffers a particular difficulty that applies to the top private Universities in the US. The two horns of this dilemma are overhead rate and high tuition fees. From a number of sources, apparently the standard industrial grant is $50k/yr, which covers some $23k tuition and fees and a similar level of stipend support for the research assistant. That doesn’t leave much room for equipment and consumables. If an overhead rate of 58% is additionally charged, then the standard industrial grant of $50k is insufficient. Matching funds from some other source are practically essential to maintain competitiveness with leaner Universities. Princeton must maintain a high quality research faculty to attract industrial funds if its fee structure is anti-competitive. Government research grants, however, claim to be committed to cover the full direct and indirect costs of research at the grantee institution. The NSF has been identified as a recalcitrant government funder, frequently negotiating grants downward. Princetonian researchers are on an equal footing for research grants from other Government sources (NIH, DoD, DoE, etc.) as those at Universities with cheaper tuition fees, and the scientific merit decides. The Princeton Materials Institute was repeatedly brought up as an excellent resource for "Blue Sky" funding, collaboration building, and migrating to new areas.

• "The money being thrown at risky but fashionable projects is overblown."
• "Traditional chemical engineering areas, like transport phenomena, separation science and chemical thermodynamics, which are as relevant as ever, struggle for funding."

The University supports patent applications where there is a licensee waiting, and will cover provisional patent filing costs regardless. If there are no licensees, the University will return all IPR to the researcher.

Princeton has a long tradition in complex fluids and polymer materials. The Department spearheaded a bid for an NSF Center, the Princeton Materials Institute, which is directed by past Chairman Bill Russel. There is work in the fields of supercritical fluids, interfacial transport, polymers, and process control, rheology and catalysis; nonlinear dynamics and process systems optimization.

With the notable exception of the Princeton Materials Institute, research in the Department is conducted through the research groups of individual members of the faculty. The typical size of a research group is about four, reflecting the desire for each professor to take on a new research student annually. There are a handful of post-docs and visiting scholars in the Department attached to research groups at any given time, but the focus of research is through graduate students. A typical research group would have two or three active research grants.

Sandra Troian, Bill Russel, George Scherer, Kyle Vanderlick, Rick Register, Dudley Saville, Yannis Kevrikidis, Pablo Debenedetti