If you like critical thinking, love chemistry, and want to use your creativity to improve the products we all use every day, you should explore chemical engineering. It’s a broad field that combines chemistry with engineering principles. Chemical engineers design industrial machines and plants that perform chemical reactions (kaboom!), develop new materials for all kinds of products from cosmetics to foods, and work at the forefront of developing fields such as nanotechnology (tiny stuff) and biotechnology (living stuff).
Want to put a face to the name? Check out these successful and celebrated chemical engineers:
Kristi Anseth: Professor, member of Institute of Medicine and National Academy of Engineering, named to MIT Technology Review as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.
Frances Arnold: Elected to all three National Acadamies: Engineering, Sciences and Medicine. Plus, she has a dinosaur in her office… awesome.
Stephanie Kwolek: Invented Kevlar, among 19 US patents, awarded National Medal of Technology.
Recommended high school courses:
- Calculus and Vectors
- Physics
- Chemistry
