Strategic Vision for Research
Furthering our bold ideas for the future
There is no more exciting time to be a chemical engineer.
Technology has never changed faster nor had more potential for a positive impact on our world than today. The implications of this rapid change and the opportunities it holds for chemical engineering solutions to our planet’s greatest challenges are enormous.
In a challenging and changing global landscape, with increasing global and societal inequity, interdependent supply chains, mega demand curves, asymmetric access to resources, and critical needs for energy and resource security, we seek creative solutions to increasingly complex problems.
At the same time, we are in the midst of extraordinary technological innovations. Fast, ubiquitous connectivity and the rapid rise of AI are driving global R&D and data-driven decision-making at light speed. Technology leapfrogging by developing nations is accelerating adoption of life-saving advances and clean energy solutions around the world. The possibilities for creative solutions to our most vexing problems have never been greater.
Chemical engineers are essential to provide leadership in developing disruptive technology solutions for a better future. From biosensors on our skin and inside our bodies to gene-editing and nanotechnology to exascale computing and machine learning, we are accelerating what’s possible through chemical engineering. With our focus on molecular transformation, and our rigor, depth, breadth and interdisciplinarity, we are uniquely positioned to integrate knowledge, methods, tools, and data across scientific and engineering disciplines to solve the complex, critical problems of our time.
Nearly every major challenge we face as humans can be addressed by the foundational training of a chemical engineer.
At Michigan Chemical Engineering, we develop critical solutions and prepare the next generation of scientists and engineers to solve humankind’s most challenging problems. We are engineering life-saving technologies and the future of human health; we are engineering a sustainable planet built on distributed, renewable resources and with net-zero carbon emissions; and we are engineering new materials by design and new processes for making materials on demand and with unprecedented capabilities, making science fiction a reality.
STRATEGIC DIRECTIONS
We have an ambitious vision for research at Michigan Chemical Engineering, one that builds upon our unique strengths, empowers our graduate and undergraduate students, engages and leverages the extraordinary community of scholars across the University of Michigan, and furthers our bold ideas for the future.
Our vision identifies three strategic directions that capture how Michigan Chemical Engineering is helping improve the human condition.
Human Health
Net Zero
Matter By Design
ENGINEERING THE FUTURE OF HUMAN HEALTH
We are innovating across the continuum of care, improving patients’ lives through scientific and technological breakthroughs in prevention, diagnostics, and therapeutics. Together with our Michigan Medicine collaborators and our Biointerfaces Institute, and with ChE’s extensive nanobiotechnology cores and lab facilities, we are engineering new technologies and tools to rapidly bring life-saving products from benchtop to bedside.
ENGINEERING NET ZERO
We are driven by the most pressing challenge facing our planet – how to power the modern world without polluting it. And, how to ameliorate the pollution we’ve already caused by industrialization over the past 100 years. We are leaders in taking a molecular-level approach to designing distributed, sustainable systems that solve energy and environmental problems on a global scale.
ENGINEERING MATTER
BY DESIGN
From the Stone Age to the Silicon Age, our society has been shaped by the materials available to us. However, tomorrow’s world will not be shaped by the discovery of – or control over – a single new material. Instead, tomorrow’s materials will be integrated multimaterial systems designed and engineered from the bottom up. Michigan ChE is leading a revolution in transformative material design, building on our unique capabilities and leadership in nanoscience. Through a new $30M NSF-funded Science & Technology Center on Complex Particle Systems, Michigan ChE will lead the way in making designer materials, precisely designed and manufactured on demand, that have the potential to transform every industry and benefit every person on the planet.
125 YEARS OF MICHIGAN ChE
Michigan Chemical Engineering has been building the future for over a century.
Michigan Chemical Engineering’s rich history is built on excellence in chemical engineering fundamentals, systems-level design combined with a molecular view, and a drive to collaborate, innovate, and lead that continues to this day. For 125 years our department has been educating the next generation of chemical engineers, conducting groundbreaking research and finding innovative solutions to complex problems to build a better future.
From this foundation, we look forward, driven by the needs and opportunities of tomorrow, shaping our strategic vision for the future of chemical engineering at U-M.
Whether it be stewarding new medical technology from benchtop to bedside, developing distributed energy solutions for a net-zero world or transforming manufacturing through materials made from the bottom-up, by design and on demand – Michigan chemical engineers, equipped with empathy and insight along with scientific and technological know-how, are positioned to help improve the lives of all people by translating ideas and discoveries into equitable engineering solutions. As part of Michigan Engineering, we share the vision of people-first engineering.
By utilizing state-of-the-art U-M facilities and collaborating with scholars across the University of Michigan, our approach to engineering new possibilities is making an impact, one medical, energy, and material problem at a time.