There are, however, many systems where interaction among the elementary building blocks no matter how well understood does not even give a glimpse of the behavior of the global system. An extreme example may be the human brain, where an understanding of its constitutive neurons is unable to shed any light on the emergence of consciousness. Characteristic for these systems is the ability to display structure without any external organizing principle being applied. It is now recognized that there are many examples in science and engineering belonging to this class.
Complex systems is an exciting and new emerging area in chemical engineering.
Chemical engineering, with its systems approach and its ability to integrate knowledge over a wide range of length scales and its intimate connection to molecules and biology, provides a natural habitat for these ideas. Research in this area ranges from analysis of bioinformatics to dynamics of granular materials. The knowledge base, however, is disproportionately small and fundamental understanding very limited. Particularly intractable are problems involving competition between mixing and segregation. Prof. Julio M. Ottino is conducting fundamental investigations with the long-range goal of assembling a coherent body of knowledge capable of yielding basic understanding of global interactions between flow and segregation in wet and dry granular materials.