(303c) The Role of Bioengineering in an Evolving Chemical Engineering Curriculum

In the 1970s and 80s, chemical engineering strongly influenced the development of a bioengineering curriculum on kinetics, transport phenomena, and thermodynamics. In the 1990s, bioengineering had matured into a distinct field with its own curriculum and teaching methodologies. At the same time, the chemical engineering started focusing more on molecular processes. Considering the ongoing evolution of our profession in the 1990s and 2000s, it became apparent that we had to educate our students on the molecular sciences, nanotechnology, and bioengineering. AIChE established the Society for Biological Engineering as a technological community, promoting the integration of chemical engineering with biology. Textbooks of our core classes included concepts and examples from both chemical and biochemical/biomolecular engineering. This presentation will discuss examples of this evolution and how bioengineering influenced the chemical engineering curriculum at Johns Hopkins University.