Research

From its inception, the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering has fostered excellent programs in research and graduate study. The consistently high quality of the chemical engineering graduate program is recognized by both the academic and the industrial communities. The faculty in the department are acknowledged leaders of research and teaching in a number of areas including biochemical engineering, bioinformatics, biomedical engineering, biorenewables, combinatorial materials design, polymeric materials, nanotechnology, tissue and metabolic engineering, interfacial chemistry and catalysis, chemical reaction engineering, electrochemical engineering, computational fluid dynamics, and statistical process control. External support for the graduate program comes from more than 40 government agencies and industrial firms, as well as from alumni and friends of the department.

With a 35,000-square-foot addition built in 1994, the department has excellent physical facilities and computational labs. The addition contains research laboratories for surface science, biotechnology, tissue engineering, biomaterials, and reaction engineering. Also located in the new building are analytical laboratories, a small pilot plant, state-of-the-art teaching laboratories, and offices. The department has close associations with a number of university-wide research centers and the Ames Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory. Research activity benefits from the support of the Ames Laboratory, the Biotechnology Instrumentation Facilities, the Plant Sciences Institute, several interdisciplinary centers, and state-of-the-art computation facilities, in addition to the departmental resources. In 2004, the department changed its name from chemical engineering to chemical and biological engineering, better reflecting the nature of the research and teaching currently underway in the department.