What is a Chemical Engineer?
Chemical Engineers are sometimes referred to as the "universal engineer" because they are needed to solve different problems for a wide range of industry types. This means there are endless opportunities for a chemical engineering graduate.
They often design equipment and processes that are needed to create products out of raw materials. Â Working in chemical, environmental and petroleum industries is common and more often there are opportunities in emerging industries based on new materials, semiconductors and biotechnology.Â
What do Chemical Engineers do?
- Develop new methods for the commercial production and control of vital products such as chemicals, minerals, and fossil fuels as well as the control of polluting and toxic substances.
- Use knowledge of materials, chemical reactions, and industrial processes to pioneer developments in industrial and consumer products.
- Provide expertise on separation processes, such as distillation, absorption, evaporation, and filtration.
- Combine unit operations into innovative systems forming new or improved products and processes.
- Mathematically analyze processes to specify instrumentation for the automatic control of manufacturing plants.
- Apply engineering principles to research projects leading to the development of new process systems and techniques.
- Build rewarding careers in industries, government research agencies, and universities.
Â
How do I know if Chemical Engineering is right for me?
There are a lot of skills that come into play and a wide variety of fields that chemical engineers learn about including chemistry, physics, mathematics, machines, mechanics, electronics and computers.
If you think you're interested in this field, it helps if you:
- Enjoy solving problems
- Have an eye for details
- Like to analyze how things work
- Can use reasoning and logic to solve problems
- Enjoy math and chemistry
- Can adhere to important safety standards
Career Opportunities
There are so many options for chemical engineers, it's hard to define this succinctly. Maybe taking a look at what some of our graduates have done can help answer this question:
- Work for a large chemical, pulp and paper, plastics or textile manufacturing firm
- Get a job with a government agency or design and consulting firm specializing in environmental regulations and pollution control
- Enter graduate school to get a more advanced education in areas like thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, mass and heat transfer
- Enter graduate school to get a degree in medicine, law or business to build on their chemical engineering problem solving skills
- Join the Peace Corps to help communities develop sanitary waste disposal systems and teach science in rural areas
- Work in a material science laboratory doing research or developing new products
- Help manage construction and startups of manufacturing plants or analyze production floors to look for ways to improve operations
UMD's most recent graduate follow-up report for Chemical Engineering majors shows that we have a 94% placement rate for our students within one year of graduation. That means that almost everyone finishing our programs either finds a career or is enrolled in graduate school soon after graduation.