How does the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering connect chemical engineering and other disciplines to produce beneficial substances?

The Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering is a discipline that produces substances that are beneficial to humans in conjunction with various disciplines, centered on chemical engineering, and offers a solid curriculum from basic to advanced courses. This discipline can contribute to solving various problems in modern society through environmentally friendly research and alternative energy development.

 

There are no “what ifs” in history, but what would our lives be like if chemical engineering didn’t exist? For starters, many of the clothes we wear are made of synthetic resins such as polyester, so we would have to make clothes only from natural fibers such as hemp, cotton, and silk; the cases of the electronics we use every day are mostly made of polymeric materials or plastics, so they would have to be made of heavy iron or other metals and would be less portable; we wouldn’t be able to use products made by processing natural gas and crude oil; and we wouldn’t have plastic bottles and asphalt around us.
There are many other examples, but chemical engineering and its products permeate every aspect of our lives, even the parts we don’t notice, so we can’t imagine a society without chemical engineering. And chemical engineering is highly interdisciplinary and its applications are endless, such as producing drugs and substances that are beneficial to humans through connections with other disciplines such as biology, electronics, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. Therefore, chemical engineering has been and will continue to be a necessary discipline.
So, what will you learn and what path will you take in our department? To give you a brief overview of our curriculum, you’ll start your freshman year by taking introductory courses in physics and chemistry to build your foundation as a science student; in your sophomore and junior years, you’ll learn the fundamentals of chemical engineering – fluid dynamics, heat transfer, and more – and see how the theories are applied in practice through undergraduate experiments; and from the second half of your junior year until you graduate, you’ll take elective courses in your major that are tailored to your career path – whether it’s research or employment. This process can be likened to building a skyscraper. No matter how tall you want to build, if you don’t have a strong enough foundation and base to support it, it will collapse. In the same way, the undergraduate curriculum is a process of building a strong foundation in the lower years so that we can understand chemical engineering through lectures and experiments in the upper years, and if we try to start the harder courses without a foundation, it will be difficult to keep up.
After completing undergraduate studies, students go on to graduate school to study their interests, and then either work in research institutes or related industries, or become professors and continue their research. In the case of employment after undergraduate studies, students work in chemical and refining companies such as SK Energy and Honam Petrochemical, and work in plant management, R&D, and other companies related to their majors. Our graduate school is organized into five parts: process development, which manages the operation of chemical plants and the production of products; nano-inorganic materials and catalytic processes, which studies catalysts and nanomaterials that speed up reactions; semiconductor and electrochemistry, which studies batteries and semiconductors such as fuel cells; biology and environment, which studies eco-friendly properties and applies chemical engineering to biology and humans; and organic polymer materials, which manufactures and studies organic materials and polymeric materials needed for human society. In addition, our seniors are showing their abilities in various fields of society.
So what are the prospects for our department? There is a serious problem of pollution caused by fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas, which are becoming increasingly depleted, and chemical engineering research can solve this problem. There is ongoing development of fuel cells and other secondary batteries that do not produce pollutants, and research in the biological and environmental fields, such as creating environmentally friendly catalysts or creating compounds that are harmless to living organisms or the human body. There is a great demand for eco-friendly research globally, with economic sanctions imposed by international organizations for failure to meet environmental standards. Therefore, investment in environmental, biological, and alternative energy research continues, as well as research in the traditional chemical engineering field.
The advantage of our department is that we have a good environment for collaborative research, not only in the existing chemical engineering field, but also in the biological and environmental fields within the same department. Therefore, I think our department is the best place to further develop the existing chemical engineering fields – catalysis, processes, etc.