What is Chemical Engineering?
Chemical Engineering concerns the science and technology related to manufacturing products from raw materials in a safe, sustainable, environmentally benign and cost-effective way. The primary physical laws underlying chemical engineering design are conservation of mass, conservation of momentum and conservation of energy. Chemical engineers model physical and chemical processes mathematically to understand and predict how and why they happen. They devise innovative methods of manipulating materials more effectively, cheaply and safely to create the diverse range of products that modern society needs. This involves understanding thermodynamics, fluid dynamics and chemical reaction kinetics and requires the ability to work with complex equations. Experiments range from manipulating tiny amounts of substances in high-tech laboratories to working with huge industrial scale processes and extreme pressures and temperatures.
Chemical engineers work at the boundary between science and engineering, striving to solve technical problems and design processes that are as sustainable as possible. Computers and electronics have made a huge difference to our ability to measure and model processes - calculations that once took months or even years can now be carried out within minutes. Technology itself is changing, with the focus moving away from traditional large scale processing to understanding processes on a molecular level, exploiting biotechnology and nanotechnology. From medicines to textiles to transport to food and drink to energy production, chemical engineers impact every aspect of modern life.
What is Analytical Science?
Analytical Science concerns the science and practice of measurement and is regarded by many as a foundation stone of modern science. It is a multidisciplinary field involving research into physical, chemical, bioanalytical and biomedical measurements in which Analytical Scientists are concerned with characterising the World around us.
Analytical Scientists operate at the point where reality interfaces with the digital age, devising ways to represent the physical and chemical World truthfully and accurately and translating data into understandable information. This involves the development and evaluation of novel procedures, instrumentation, statistics and computational methods applied to environmental, biochemical, biomedical and industrial measurement problems. From developing medical diagnostic tests to guaranteeing food standards, to spacecraft atmosphere design to detection of chemical weapons, Analytical Scientists are vital to the high-tech revolution in virtually all areas of science and engineering.
Bringing Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science together
Chemical Engineers have been described as "Universal Engineers" for their multidisciplinarity, versatility and diverse involvement in the development of new manufacturing technologies. Analytical Scientists can equally be regarded as 'Universal Scientists', since all scientific research and quality control relies on their specialist knowledge in measurement and analysis.
Bringing together Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science in one School provides synergistic benefits that should enable us to work at the forefront of scientific and engineering research. Combining expertise in engineering design, physical sciences, life sciences, computer modelling and electronics, we are in a unique position to work across the boundaries of these disciplines, to push back the frontiers of science and technology and train the future leaders of academia and industry.