Chemical engineering at crossroads

Through periodic introspection and assessment, the chemical engineering field has developed a mature undergraduate curriculum built on a strong science background in mathematics, physics, and chemistry. This brings a unique set of skills in transport, reaction engineering, and thermodynamics, coupled with suitable process systems engineering and process design courses, to supply well-trained engineers to a vast array of process manufacturing facilities. These facilities produce basic chemicals, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, petrochemicals, food and agricultural products, minerals, and materials. While this maturity has served existing industries well, we argue that the chemical engineering field is at crossroads between managing the curriculum of undergraduate and graduate education to supply the needs of established industries while creating innovators for emerging industries. While this is a great opportunity for yet another introspection, we caution that the inadvertent cannibalization of the field must be avoided. We do argue in favour of adding a biology sequence and a computational science sequence to the core at the undergraduate level in a related perspective article.

Automated summary

Through introspection and assessment, the chemical engineering field has developed a mature undergraduate curriculum that equips engineers with skills in transport, reaction engineering, and thermodynamics. However, there is a need to adapt the curriculum to meet the needs of established industries while nurturing innovators for emerging industries, without harming the field unintentionally.