2009-2010 Bulletin – PDF - SEAS Bulletin - Columbia University

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
801 S. W. Mudd, MC 4721, 212-854-4453
www.cheme.columbia.edu
81
CHAIR
Alan C. West
DEPARTMENTAL
ADMINISTRATOR
Teresa Colaizzo
PROFESSORS
Christopher J. Durning
George W. Flynn
Chemistry
Carl C. Gryte
Jingyue Ju
Jeffrey T. Koberstein
Sanat Kumar
Edward F. Leonard
Ben O’Shaughnessy
Nicholas J. Turro
Chemistry
Alan C. West
ASSOCIATE PROFESSORS
Scott A. Banta
ASSISTANT PROFESSORS
Mark A. Borden
V. Faye McNeill
LECTURER
Jordan Spencer
ADJUNCT PROFESSORS
Robert I. Pearlman
David Zudkevitch
ADJUNCT ASSOCIATE
PROFESSORS
Aghavni Bedrossian-Omer
Michael I. Hill
Lynn H. Lander
ADJUNCT ASSISTANT
PROFESSORS
Louis Mattas
Jack McGourty
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.
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 environment-sensitive
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 nanoparticlepolymer
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 engi-
SEAS 2009–2010