2011-2012 Bulletin – PDF - SEAS Bulletin - Columbia University

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Chemical Engineering
801 S. W. Mudd, MC 4721
Phone: 212-854-4453
www.cheme.columbia.edu
Chair
Sanat K. Kumar
Departmental
Administrator
Teresa Colaizzo
Professors
Christopher J. Durning
George W. Flynn, Chemistry
Jingyue Ju
Jeffrey T. Koberstein
Sanat K. Kumar
Edward F. Leonard
Ben O’Shaughnessy
Nicholas J. Turro, Chemistry
Alan C. West
Associate Professor
Scott A. Banta
Assistant Professor
V. Faye McNeill
Adjunct Professors
Stanley Leshaw
Robert I. Pearlman
Adjunct
Associate Professors
Aghavni Bedrossian-Omer
Michael I. Hill
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 ideasand 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 proteinbased
chemical sensors, controlledrelease
drugs, new agricultural
products, and many others.
Driven by this diversity of
applications, chemical engineering
is perhaps the broadest of all
engineering disciplines: chemistry,
physics, mathematics, biology, and
computing are all deeply involved. The
research of the faculty of Columbia’s
Chemical Engineering Department is
correspondingly broad. Some of the
areas under active investigation are the
fundamental physics, chemistry, and
engineering of polymers and other soft
materials; the electrochemistry of fuel
cells and other interfacial engineering
phenomena; the bioengineering of
artificial organs and immune cell
activation; the engineering and
biochemistry of sequencing the human
genome; the chemistry and physics
of surface-polymer interactions; the
biophysics of cellular processes in
living organisms; the physics of thin
polymer films; the chemistry of smart
polymer materials with environmentsensitive
surfaces; biosensors with
tissue engineering applications; the
physics and chemistry of DNA-DNA
hybridization and melting; the chemistry
and physics of DNA microarrays
with applications in gene expression
and drug discovery; the physics and
chemistry of nanoparticle- polymer
composites with novel electronic and
photonic properties. Many experimental
techniques are employed, from neutron
scattering to fluorescence microscopy,
and the theoretical work involves both
analytical mathematical physics and
numerical computational analysis.
Students enrolling in the Ph.D.
program will have the opportunity
to conduct research in these and
other areas. Students with degrees
in chemical engineering and other
engineering disciplines, in chemistry,
in physics, in biochemistry, and in
other related disciplines are all natural
participants in the Ph.D. program
and are encouraged to apply. The
Department of Chemical Engineering at
Columbia is committed to a leadership
role in research and education in frontier
areas of research and technology
where progress derives from the
conjunction of many different traditional
research disciplines. Increasingly,
new technologies and fundamental
research questions demand this type of
interdisciplinary approach.
The undergraduate program
provides a chemical engineering degree
that is a passport to many careers in
directly related industries as diverse as
biochemical engineering, environmental
management, and pharmaceuticals. The
degree is also used by many students
as a springboard from which to launch
careers in medicine, law, management,
banking and finance, politics, and
so on. For those interested in the
fundamentals, a career of research and
teaching is a natural continuation of
their undergraduate studies. Whichever
path the student may choose after
graduation, the program offers a deep
understanding of the physical and
engineering 2011–2012