Department of Chemical Engineering Senior Design Projects, 1920-1959

The Columbia University Department of Chemical Engineering. Chemical engineering is perhaps the broadest of all engineering disciplines: chemistry, physics, mathematics, biology, and computing are all deeply involved. The research of the faculty of Columbia's Chemical Engineering Department is correspondingly broad. Some of the areas under active investigation are the fundamental physics, chemistry, and engineering of polymers and other soft materials; the electrochemistry of fuel cells and other interfacial engineering phenomena; the bioengineering of artificial organs and immune cell activation; the engineering and biochemistry of sequencing the human genome; the chemistry and physics of surface-polymer interactions; the biophysics of cellular processes in living organisms; the physics of thin polymer films; the chemistry of smart polymer materials with environment-sensitive surfaces; biosensors with tissue engineering applications; the physics and chemistry of DNA-DNA hybridization and melting; the chemistry and physics of DNA microarrays with applications in gene expression and drug discovery; the physics and chemistry of nanoparticle- polymer composites with novel electronic and photonic properties. Many experimental techniques are employed, from neutron scattering to fluorescence microscopy, and the theoretical work involves both analytical mathematical physics and numerical computational analysis.