Columbia Video Network - The Fu Foundation School Of Engineering And Applied Science

Master of Science in Chemical Engineering

Chemical engineering is a highly interdisciplinary field concerned with materials and processes at the heart of a broad range of technologies. Practicing chemical engineers are the experts in charge of the development and production of diverse products in traditional chemical industries as well as many emerging new technologies. The chemical engineer guides the passage of the product from the laboratory to the marketplace, from ideas and prototypes to functioning articles and processes, from theory to reality. This requires a remarkable depth and breadth of understanding of physical and chemical aspects of materials and their production.

The expertise of chemical engineers is essential to production, marketing, and application in such areas as pharmaceuticals, high-performance materials in the aerospace and automotive industries, biotechnologies, semiconductors in the electronics industry, paints and plastics, petroleum refining, synthetic fibers, artificial organs, biocompatible implants and prosthetics and numerous others. Increasingly, chemical engineers are involved in new technologies employing highly novel materials whose unusual response at the molecular level endows them with unique properties. Examples include environmental technologies, emerging biotechnologies of major medical importance employing DNA- or protein-based chemical sensors, controlled-release drugs, new agricultural products, and many others.