Graduate Programs

About Our Programs

The graduate program in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering began at Delaware when Allan P. Colburn, a leader of the profession in the 1930s, came to the department in 1938. His numerous technical contributions are familiar to students of heat and mass transfer; they are also recalled nationally by the Colburn Award of the AIChE. Jack A. Gerster, Olaf P. Bergelin, Robert L. Pigford, and Kurt Wohl joined Colburn in the early years after World War II, and the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department rapidly developed an international reputation under their guidance. This tradition of excellence has continued, with both the undergraduate and graduate programs consistently ranked in the top ten in the country.

The Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department presently has 30 full-time faculty. In addition, we profit from interactions with part-time international faculty associates and from local industries. Our current graduate student population consists of about 198 full-time domestic and international students, plus several part-time and extension students from industry. The low student-faculty ratio in the department, approximately 6 to 1, permits close interaction between students and faculty—a critical component of the graduate experience at Delaware. Our graduates consistently obtain employment in outstanding academic and industrial institutions.

World-class research and teaching facilities of the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department at Delaware are located in Colburn Laboratory, the Interdisciplinary Sciences & Engineering Laboratory, and the Ammon Pinizzotto Biopharmaceutical Innovation Center. These are augmented by College and University resources, such as the Delaware Biotechnology Institute and the W. M. Keck Electron Microscopy Facility.