The doctoral (Ph.D.) degree prepares students to solve complex, long-term research problems. You can expect to graduate in four to five years and to work on a large research project, culminating in a dissertation. The majority of our doctoral graduates end up in industry careers, usually in research and product development positions. Others go on to careers in academia, either as a postdoctoral researcher or an assistant professor. The Chemical Engineering program provides a strong grounding in the fundamentals and explores critical applications in a wide range of process systems. Students gain advanced knowledge of chemical engineering theory and its relationship to related engineering processes, including biochemical, biomolecular, biomedical, biotechnology, catalysis, colloid and surface science, computational modeling, environmental, fluid mechanics and rheology, materials processing, nanotechnology, polymers, thin films, process control, process design, separations, transport phenomena, thermodynamics, and modeling. Students graduate with the qualitative and quantitative skills necessary for professional research and teaching in chemical engineering.
Processes and systems that surround us today are often characterized by complex interactions between components, subsystems, and subprocesses and their analysis and design transcend the traditional disciplinary boundaries. As a result, some of the world's most pressing grand technical challenges can be categorized as process/systems engineering problems. The process systems engineering (PSE) branch of chemical engineering is an interdisciplinary field that addresses the broad area of process design, operation, and optimization. At UC Davis, the Department of Chemical Engineering is proud to have a comprehensive program within PSE with faculty covering the full spectrum including process design, system modeling and simulation, dynamics and control, process analytics, optimization, and economics. Current research interests include control of large-scale, networked, nonlinear, and/or distributed parameter systems, optimization and optimal control, process monitoring, fault-detection and diagnosis, and fault-tolerant control, and process design and techno-economic modeling. The solutions and methods developed have many practical applications. The core applications include petrochemical process industries, energy systems, food/agriculture, and biomanufacturing.
