As a student trying to decide on a field of engineering to pursue, you may be wondering… what is chemical and biological engineering? What do chemical and biological engineers do?
Chemical and biological engineering is the application of scientific principles for the design and development of processes to sustainably address industrial, commercial, or social needs. This includes the processes that produce the food, clean water and medicine we need as a society, and those that address some of the most pressing challenges that humanity currently faces, including pollution and climate change.
It is the discipline that turns the small-scale scientific work done in labs into practical commercial and societal realities. A scientist, for example, may develop a new vaccine to protect against an emerging disease, but this is done in a lab setting where it is only possible to produce a handful of doses at a time. It is a chemical or biological engineer who will take this vaccine and design, develop, build and operate the process required to make the millions of doses a year needed to protect everyone. Given their expertise in designing processes, which is unique to this discipline, chemical and biological engineers are often referred to as “process engineers”.
So, what are processes?
By “process” we mean the series and combinations of specific actions or steps that transform a specific input, usually raw materials and energy, into useful, value-added final products. These inputs and products can be tangible (such as the transformation of raw spodumene rock into the refined lithium used in the battery of an EV car) or intangible (such as the data inputs from sensors that are processed into a signal to precisely manipulate the robots assembling those vehicles).
Chemical and biological engineering is the only discipline that has expertise in the design, development, construction and operation of processes, which means we’re the ones that understand how everything fits together.
What’s involved in designing a process?
The design and development of a process involves much more than just selecting the steps making it up. It involves conceptualizing and designing the machinery and equipment required to make the matter and energy entering the process or system behave in ways to make each step work – thus bending physics to our will – and then building and operating those steps.
For example, chemical and biological engineers who want to produce carbon-neutral fuels from microalgae would be responsible for designing and building:
- the bioreactor used to quickly grow large quantities of microalgal cells,
- the processing units to extract the oil from the harvested microalgae,
- the reactor that converts that oil into crude biofuels, and
- the distillation columns that refine that crude fuel into the final, carbon-neutral and useable fuel.
They would also be responsible for designing the algorithms and automated control strategies to keep each of those units operating safely and efficiently.
Given the scale of this work, compared to other engineering disciplines which are narrower in scope, chemical and biological engineers need to know a lot of things. This means mastering the fundamental rules of matter and energy through physics and chemistry, but also staying up to date with emerging technologies such as AI, nanotechnology, and biotechnology, which become new tools we use to design the diverse processes that make and control everything we see around us.
With their unique expertise, chemical and biological engineers are in high demand
Because everything in the universe is a process, and because chemical and biological engineers are process experts, we are able to see how everything fits together in a way that no other engineering discipline can. This means that we are some of the most versatile and sought-after engineers in the world, and the demand for chemical and biological engineers is only increasing.
Whether you are looking to recover precious metals from e-waste, grow vegetables in vertical farms, manufacture biodegradable plastics, build solar plants, remove CO2 from our atmosphere or develop artificial organs to be used as life-saving transplants, there is a chemical or biological engineer leading that endeavour.
Interestingly, because everything is a process, including the systems that shape and run our financial, legal and medical systems, chemical and biological engineers also end up working in, and in fact are often recruited by, a wide range of perhaps unexpected fields and employers. In addition to working for more conventional chemical, energy and biotechnological companies, recent chemical and engineering graduates from UBC can be found working at Microsoft, Tesla, Pepsi, Boston Consulting Group, Amazon, Capital One and Arc’teryx, to name just a few.
With their ability to see the big picture and understand how everything fits together, chemical and biological engineers also make outstanding entrepreneurs and leaders. Many of our graduates end up in leadership positions in their industry, running large teams and multi-million dollar projects within only a few years of graduation, or starting their own companies. This is not a claim other engineering disciplines can make.
Chemical and biological engineers are also leaders in innovation and research and development of phenomenal new technologies, always pushing the envelope of what is possible. Today, chemical and biological engineers are working on converting agricultural waste into clothing and furniture, trapping CO2 from the air to convert it directly into sustainable fuels, fighting climate change in the process, delivering cancer drugs directly to targeted cells to improve outcomes with no treatment side effects, and developing edible, low-cost vaccines to treat malnutrition and diseases across the world, and so much more.
Chemical and biological engineering is one of the most versatile and in-demand fields of engineering. It provides an immensely powerful skill set to tackle some of our most daunting challenges, is one of the most innovative and employable engineering disciplines, and is a growing and fascinating field that is constantly changing and improving the world we live in.