<p>I'm in college now, and our chem e program is oriented around thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, energy transfer, etc. I don't really like this stuff, but I'm interested in doing research in something related to chemistry and applied science, maybe even some organic chem. I'm a freshmen, and I have no idea what area interest me yet, but I know for sure that I don't want to go into crap about bio-fuels, batch processes, stream flows or something along those lines. I hate tedious subjects, they drive me crazy.</p>
<p>I don't know what chemical engineering research areas are out there. I've tried google, and I've decided that asking someone here is much simpler.</p>
<p>^ Asking professors in your department would be a good idea too, if you want to do meaningful undergraduate research at your current institution.</p>
<p>I’m a freshman too, and I’ve been having this same problem in trying to figure out my major. From what I’ve researched, I agree that there seems to be at least somewhat of a disconnect between the undergraduate chemical engineering curriculum and the research that the ChemE departments actually do. Undergrad ChemE seems to be primarily about reactor design, while a lot of the research in ChemE is similar to the kind of stuff you’ll see Chemistry, Physics, and Materials Science departments doing as well.</p>
<p>If your school has offers a program in Materials Science & Engineering, or whatever they call it, you might want to look into that.</p>
<p>As a small data point about half the people in my undergrad’s MSE department would declared ChemE going in to college, take the intro class, hate it, take the intro MSE, love it, and then switch majors.</p>
<p>Here’s what I want to do. I want to throw out the classes that require me to go to Appendixes to look at steam tables, cox charts, A B C values of the Antoine’s Equation, individual constants for calculating a substance’s heat capacity at a given temperature and pressure. etc. etc. etc.</p>
<p>I want to shred them and replace them with more classes that would better prepare me for research or even help me understand what kind of research I like.</p>
<p>As far as I know, those things I listed are good for industrial purposes. Like when I have an internship or a co-op, I have to solve tedious engineering problems.</p>
<p>P.S. I’m enjoying O-chem MUCH better than my chem e class right now. On the contrary, people in my chem e class HATE o-chem and don’t think chem e is that bad.</p>
<p>dude i am telling you right now to check out your college’s materials science program. I am a chem e student at PSU and currently taking some classes in matse. this sounds like what you are looking for</p>
<p>MSE can either be considered specialized ChemE, MechE, Physics or Chemistry depending on which part of the field you’re looking at. At some places we’re even daring enough to consider ourselves our own field.</p>
<p>(How many people consider metallurgy a subset of ChemE?)</p>
<p>yes materials engineering and chem e are a lot of the same stuff. materials science is more physics and quantum chemistry…it depends on the program at different universities. some programs emphasize materials science, some mat e, and others dive into both equally or allow you to choose. and yes materials science is a hard major but if you are looking to do research in chem e or matse you should know that research in any engineering discipline is very demanding. if you want just applied physics and chemistry without any emphasis on reactor design and industrial processes it seems like materials science is what you want, however most mat science programs still require you to take classes on industry process. Look up semiconductors and electronic/photonic materials. you may see something you might like…but the only way to completely avoid the industrial aspect of engineering majors is to switch to plain physics or chemistry</p>
<p>back to chem e in grad school. Would it be ok to major in mat e and then go to chem e in grad school? Similarly, can I remain involved in research in the chem e department while being a material engineering major? Like someone above said, the undergrad chem e and the grad chem e programs are pretty segregated because one is focused on industry and the other is focused on research.</p>
<p>A number of my friends either have co-advisors or work entirely in the ChemE department for the MSE PhDs. It’s not quite as easy as getting straight into the ChemE department, but often times it can be done.</p>