EngSpotlight Interview: Chemical Engineering
What does Chemical Engineering mean to you?
Chemical engineering, in my opinion, is one of the broadest engineering disciplines. Chemical engineers design, implement, and supervise processes in which matter is transformed, in some way. There are a lot of examples, the very traditional processes that people think about, I think, when they think about chemical engineering, are petrochemical processes. Of course, people don't realize that it's not just about producing gasoline and diesel fuel and so forth, but many other feedstocks for other production processes like plastics, for example. But there are many other areas and fields in which chemical engineers work, like pulp and paper, production of polymers which I mentioned already, food engineering, biochemical engineering, which includes things like the production of pharmaceuticals. They also work in the energy sector. And there are many, many other applications. Another way in which you can think about chemical engineers is that they're also referred to as process engineers. And a process can be anything. And so you find chemical engineers working, for example, in the financial industry, because you can think about financial transactions as a process and apply the principles that chemical engineers are trained in.
How important is the Chemical Engineering sector to Canada's economy?
Chemical engineers play a very important role in the Canadian economy, because you'll find chemical engineers active in almost all sectors of our industries. So this includes, of course, as I mentioned earlier, the petrochemical sector, pulp and paper, the food industry. The chemical engineers work on issues related to climate change, they work in the automotive sector, pharmaceuticals, and so on. So they're pervasive throughout the economic activity that's occurring in the country.
What are the different fields that Chemical Engineers can specialize in?
There are the traditional fields, and I mentioned the petrochemical industry. I mentioned the pulp and paper industry, but there's also the food industry, which is one that uses chemical engineers. Automotive, the energy sector, environmental areas, environmental and sustainability fields. Finance, I mentioned. I would also include materials production; any kind of materials.
What are some of the pressing challenges faced in the Chemical Engineering field?
I'll interpret the question as “What are some of the most pressing challenges that chemical engineers are helping to solve?” And I would say chemical engineers play a very, very important role in climate change, for instance, through topics like carbon sequestration, decarbonisation of processes and industries, and also have a very important role to play, for example, in the development of alternative fuels and alternative energy sources, including things like hydrogen and hydrogen fuel cells, for example.
You wrote a publication titled “Model discrimination in copolymerization using the sequential Bayesian Monte Carlo method.” Can you tell us more about the importance of statistics in Chemical engineering?
This is an area that's very dear to my heart. And actually, I've been involved in the application and development of statistical methods in chemical engineering for all of my career, which is about 34 years now.
So one thing that's kind of interesting is that Chemical Engineering and Chemical Engineering programs were actually one of the first to incorporate the statistics courses as part of the core curriculum. And the reason for that, I think, was that a lot of the development of statistical methods like experimental design techniques, were actually carried out by practitioners in the chemical industries.
In Canada, I would say the late 60s, early 70s, we had the great fortune of having a number of faculty members in chemical engineering departments that had training in statistics and were able to convince their colleagues that such a course was part of the core. So we've had a long tradition in chemical engineering of research and application of statistical methods. Why is it so important? Well, in chemical engineering, in any process industry, we deal with an awful lot of data, and we have to analyze that data and use that data to either optimize a process, control a process or develop new processes. And so all of these activities require the use of statistical methods.
In my work, I've talked about things like product development and the development of new materials; all of these require statistical methods in order to be successful. And so it actually is a pretty, pretty important and core part of what chemical engineers do.
What are some interesting developments you are keeping an eye on?
I'm particularly interested these days in changes that might be occurring to the way engineering curricula are going to be delivered. We're talking about different modes of delivery. We've learned through the pandemic, for instance, we've learned a little bit at least about online delivery. And I'm not suggesting that we're going to migrate to online delivery, but there certainly is an opportunity for us to do perhaps more hybrid learning, perhaps more flipped classrooms, just different modes of delivery and also, maybe a different approach where we use more open-ended problem based case studies for the teaching of chemical engineering. I think we also want to look at more flexibility for our students and addressing the needs of our students and what they're really interested in. The other developments that are very interesting, verymrelevant right now, for instance, is the impact that artificial intelligence is going to have on our curriculum and on the way we teach students, for instance. Lots of talk these days about ChatGPT, and whether we should ban that or should we brace it, or what do we do? And personally, it kind of reminds me actually of when I was a young undergraduate student, and the question of, were we allowed to use a calculator on an exam or not? It's kind of like that because these technologies are going to be developed, and I think it's incumbent upon us to figure out how we use it, how we incorporate, and what the parameters are going to be. So those are some of the things I'm looking at and observing with great interest actually.
How should Chemical Engineering students better equip themselves for the professional field?
What is really important is to pay attention to what some people call the soft skills. I like to call them durable skills. These are things like leadership, communication, collaboration, teamwork, and so on. I read a very interesting book recently, that's written by the actor Alan Alda, who it turns out he's well known for that old TV series, M*A*S*H. But it turns out he has a great interest in science communication and hosted, for instance, the Scientific American discovery show that was on PBS a number of years ago. And he has developed and looked at the use of improv for helping scientists and engineers communicate better. And the issue is that, if you cannot express yourself well, and if you can't explain to non-engineers what it is you're doing and what your solution is all about, you're not going to be very effective. And so I think communication skills are extremely important if you're going to be successful.
What is your advice for first-year engineering students?
It's well known that the engineering curriculum is packed. There's a lot going on. I think for new students that are just starting, my first piece of advice is, make sure you find a good study group. Find people that you can work with, and work together, because that's the key to success in engineering is teamwork and working with others. Sure, you have to understand what's being taught yourself, but it doesn't hurt to study with others and work together with others. So that's one thing. The other thing I would really encourage you is to look beyond your classes, look beyond your courses, because there are many things going on within the faculty and within the university. So we have a lot of teams, a lot of societies that you can work with. And I think you also learn a lot from those activities, some of those extracurricular, co-curricular activities. And finally, I think my advice is that, take care of yourself. Make sure you get enough sleep, make sure you eat well and make sure you get enough exercise because it's really, really important that you look after yourself, and look after your well being.
