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.
To keep up with the increasing energy demand and changing global macro-economics, it is necessary to develop new technologies for energy generation and storage and for novel chemical transformations. Although these applications involve a wide array of technologies, they share a common reliance on the need for the design of new materials and chemical processes, as well as a deeper fundamental understanding of the underlying science. The department faculty's research in this area involves designing (often from first principles), synthesizing, characterizing, and testing novel functional materials, technique development, as well as developing fundamental understanding of atomistic phenomena. Using a variety of synthesis and characterization techniques, Professor Moule's group studies organic electronics for applications in optoelectronics and modern transistors. Professor Block studies optimization of biological processes using data-intensive approaches. Professor Gates research focuses on synthesizing well-defined, atomically dispersed catalysts that can be characterized extensively using synchrotron techniques and electron microscopy.
