Meet the Department
Read interviews with our current academics and profiles of our Chemical Engineers both past and present to discover more about the heritage and diversity of the Department.
Teaching with Tom Rodgers
Meet the Department 31 October 2016
The best thing about teaching is helping students to develop their skills and knowledge. It is great to explain concepts to students and then see how they start to understand and are then able to take those ideas and solve complex problems.
#ChemEngCatchUp Episode 10 – Emily Cooksey
Meet the Department 30 September 2016
All of those things make it quite harmful to the environment. So as with a lot of other technologies at the moment, we’re trying to find cleaner ways of doing things. So my research is based on a cleaner way of cleaning our waste water.
#ChemEngCatchUp Episode 8 – Gbemi Oluleye
Meet the Department 29 July 2016
And I told the person that was taking us around that I wanted to be able to produce that flow sheet. And they said, ‘well then you’ve got to be a Chemical Engineer’. And I said ‘okay, I’m going to be a Chemical Engineer’. I was nine at this time!
#ChemEngCatchUp Episode 7 – Tom Rodgers
Meet the Department 27 June 2016
My research involves the manufacture of formulated products. So I think a lot of people would recognise formulated products as, sort of, everyday items that they use. So things like shampoos, conditioners, toothpaste. And ice cream and mayonnaise and things like that.
#ChemEngCatchUp Episode 6 – Ximena Schmidt
Meet the Department 29 April 2016
Well I’m a Research Associate, also known as a PDRA. It’s a really special position within the universities because almost all of us are attached to different projects. So although we are part of the University, we are basically just linked with that one project.
#ChemEngCatchUp Episode 5 – Adil Farooq
Meet the Department 23 March 2016
Chemical Engineering is a very diverse course so you get people from all over the world – different languages, different cultures – a lot of whom I’m still in touch with right now. And I made some really great friends who are now some of the best friends that I’ve ever had.
#ChemEngCatchUp Episode 3 – Professor Aline Miller
Meet the Department 29 January 2016
So we take our inspiration from natural materials, from shells, from how bananas organise when they grow, for example. And then we will actually design molecules, and look at how molecules interact with each other, and design them so that they pack and structure in a highly efficient and well organised way.
#ChemEngCatchUp Episode 2 – Dr Thomas Vetter
Meet the Department 18 December 2015
In that area, of course, when I do a good job, or when the industry takes up my research, then it leads to price reductions or time to market reductions. So that means that pharmaceuticals might be available faster or might be cheaper. And that, of course, is highly beneficial to the general public. I would say in any Western state, but also, specifically the UK.
#ChemEngCatchUp Episode 1 – Dr James Winterburn
Meet the Department 27 November 2015
Yeah, so I think the way I kind of got into engineering, and becoming an academic in chemical engineering, involved a lot of luck. Some conscious decisions as well, but really it was sort of a random path that ended up in the right place. I think I’m in the right place for me, and that’s because what I always had was curiosity.