This new century will be known as the biotech century. The biotech economy will be more powerful, more global, and more pervasive than any past economy. The biotech industry will most likely dwarf all previous technology shifts in scope, scale, and speed. Discussions at this session indicated that the trend is away from traditional areas of petroleum and chemical commodity business toward specialty chemicals in fields such as food processing, general personal care products, pharmaceuticals, etc. Biology, microbiology, genetic engineering and biochemistry now fall within the accepted curricula of traditional chemical engineering.
Life sciences are less and less an option for the chemical engineer.
The Department of Chemical Engineering has been working with the Biology and Chemistry Departments in the School of Sciences in offering the new biochemical engineering track for chemical engineering majors to produce graduates for the changing world. This new biochemical track would serve to provide graduate students for the many biochemical engineering graduate programs in the state and country and provide employees to the growing demand for biochemical engineers in industry. For more information, please contact one of our chemical engineering professors. Engineering majors might be interested in having this minor since it adds value to our engineering degree. For engineering majors, the 15 hours of engineering courses are already completed in an engineering curricula.