WASHINGTON — New investments in U.S. chemical engineering are needed to maintain global leadership and meet societal challenges — including generating medical advances, furthering the energy transition, and making food and water safer and more sustainable, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

New Directions for Chemical Engineering presents a vision for the future of chemical engineering research, innovation, and education. In the past century, chemical engineering has led to advances such as the invention of stable polymers that can be used in medical devices, the development of synthetic fertilizers that enabled the Green Revolution in agriculture, and the creation and production of materials used in everyday electronics. The report says new investments, collaborations, and educational practices are needed if this progress is to continue.

“Chemical engineering is often at the heart of solutions to many of the problems we face, but for our field to stay in a position of global leadership and continue our pace of innovation, we need to reaffirm strong investment in this field,” said Eric Kaler, president of Case Western Reserve University and chair of the committee that wrote the report. “We lay out a detailed path forward for where research investments and interdisciplinary, cross-sector collaborations should be targeted to maximize the impact and benefit of chemical engineering to the world in the coming decades.”

“With the right investments and continuous spirit of innovation, chemical engineers will be able to meet some of today’s most pressing challenges — including decarbonizing our economy, improving sustainability, and advancing drug discovery and pharmaceutical manufacturing processes,” said John Anderson, president of the National Academy of Engineering.

Decarbonizing U.S. Energy
Chemical engineering will play an important role in decarbonizing the U.S. economy and in mitigating climate change. Chemical engineers can enable technological advances in every part of the energy value chain, from how energy is generated to how we use it. The report recommends that federal research funding focus on developing technologies that enable the shift to lower-carbon energy sources, new technologies that use little or no carbon, and cost-effective carbon capture and storage. Cross-sector collaborations should focus on pilot- and demonstration-scale projects for new energy technologies.

Investing in Students
The report recommends changes to how chemical engineers are traditionally educated and trained. Chemical engineering departments should transform undergraduate curricula to prepare the next generation of engineers for the challenges ahead. Graduate students should be provided more experiential learning opportunities, and universities and industry should work to remove barriers for placing graduate students in internships.

To improve recruitment and retention of chemical engineering students who are women or people of color, undergraduate program engineering departments should build effective mentoring and support structures, with a particular focus on supporting transfer students from community colleges. Graduate programs should consider changes to their admission criteria to remove barriers for these underrepresented groups and should welcome students with degrees in related disciplines.

Targeted and Accessible Medicine
The report also recommends that federal research investments in biomolecular engineering focus on advancing personalized medicine and developing engineering approaches to reduce health care costs and address equity and access issues in health care.

The demand for new medical therapies, such as monoclonal antibodies and mRNA therapeutics, will continue to grow, and chemical engineers should collaborate with life scientists to reduce the costs and improve the applicability of these therapies. Other opportunities for chemical engineers to contribute to medicine include developing noninvasive or targeted drug delivery methods — and applying chemical engineering principles to cancer immunotherapy, vaccine design, and treatments for infectious disease and autoimmune disorders.

Food, Water, and Air
Acknowledging the role chemical engineering has played in contributing to environmental contamination, the report says chemical engineers can help improve the quality and sustainability of food, water, and air. Researchers should form collaborations that focus on scaling agricultural and sustainability interventions, advancing food preservation and storage, and ultimately minimizing the impact of agriculture and food production. The report recommends federal funding for research that can enhance understanding of water dynamics and structure, and that advances separation technologies that can remove contaminants from water. Chemical engineers can help improve air quality by advancing understanding of aerosol particles.

Manufacturing and the Circular Economy
Federal research funding should focus on innovative technologies necessary to transition to a circular economy, in which materials and resources are reused or repurposed in manufacturing and production rather than being fully consumed. In addition, researchers should collaborate on pilot and demonstration projects as part of the transition from fossil-fuel based organic feedstocks to more sustainable feedstocks for chemical and materials manufacturing.

International Collaboration
The report notes that within all research areas, it is critical for chemical engineers to collaborate across sectors, disciplines, and internationally. Funding should be set aside to support this collaboration, with the goal of connecting U.S. researchers to chemical engineering strengths in other countries.

The study — undertaken by the Committee on Chemical Engineering in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities — was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Biological and Environmental Research Program; U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, Advanced Manufacturing Office; and the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. Forty-five academic departments, private companies, and professional organizations provided additional financial contributions. A full list is available here.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, technology, and medicine. They operate under an 1863 congressional charter to the National Academy of Sciences, signed by President Lincoln.

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