Breathing Life into Chemical Engineering
Michael Peters
Michael Peters is transforming VCU’s stretching the discipline of chemical engineering department into an extension of at VCU to encompass the life sciences.
Chemical companies in the United States are reinventing themselves, and the schools that educate the next generation of chemical engineers need to change with them. That’s the appraisal of Michael Peters, the new chemical engineering chair at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Engineering.
In a globally competitive economy, observes Peters, the production of commodity chemicals used in bulk manufacturing is moving overseas, to China , where costs are lower. Major U.S. chemical corporations are investing in life science enterprises that offer greater growth prospects, and, increasingly, they’re hiring engineers with multi-disciplinary backgrounds extending to biology and or medicine.
“All these major chemical companies have developed life science divisions,” Peters says. “3M has one. Monsanto has one. Proctor & Gamble, too. Life science engineering is the fastest-growing of all fields that employ engineers. If you’re going to be competitive as an engineering school, you need a curriculum and program that will support this trend.”
Such a forecast might prove troubling for older institutions whose resources are tied up in tenured faculty and dedicated lab space. But it represents a fantastic opportunity for a fast-expanding program like VCU Engineering, which did not even exist in 1994 when Peters took on his previous post as chairman of the Florida State University chemical and biomedical engineering department. At FSU, Peters spent 10 years transforming the chem. engineering program there into a biomedical engineering program. Now he’s tasked with doing something similar at VCU: integrating chemical engineering with the life sciences.
Peters will oversee the development of a new curriculum, establish interdisciplinary partnerships with other VCU departments involved in the life sciences, recruit three new faculty members over the next two years, and boost enrollment. That’s in addition to teaching his own classes and conducting his own research in biomedical engineering.
The original conception of VCU’s Chemical Engineering program was fairly conventional: Develop a curriculum that would supply engineers to the Richmond region’s prominent chemical sector. DuPont and Honeywell, for instance, maintain large operations locally that convert polymers to high-performance fibers like Kevlar and Spectra used in body armor. Over time, however, it has become clear that the best employment opportunities for VCU’s engineering grads, and some of the most exciting research opportunities for its professors, stand at the intersection of chemical engineering and health and biological sciences biology.
At the same time, Virginia Commonwealth University has adopted a strategy for becoming a nationally recognized research institution by investing in a multi-disciplinary approach to the life sciences. When Engineering Dean Robert Mattauch interviewed Peters last year for the vacant departmental chair position, the university’s vision for the future lined up with Peters’ almost perfectly. “We saw the future of Chemical Engineering in the life sciences,” Mattauch says. “ “Mike had transformed the chem. engineering program at FSU, and he laid out a plan for how we could do it, too.” We are convinced that Dr. Peters sees clearly the future of Chemical Engineering in the United States and are delighted that his view links v ery closely with those of VCU with its strength and leadership in l ife s ciences and medicine.
Bridging the disciplines comes naturally to Peters. A recent visitor to his office saw an easel and canvas splashed with vivid colors – the engineering prof had taken a stab at creating cover art for a new textbook he’s publishing. Still unpacking from his recent move to Richmond , Peters had left open a tray of surgeon’s tools such as miniature forceps and tiny dissecting scissors. He uses the implements for surgical applications to work on small animals, he explains. Even when a chemical engineer conducts research at the level of organic chemicals and cellular metabolism, knowledge of anatomy and physiology is crucial. “VCU has a good source of domestic mini-pigs,” he adds approvingly. “Pig hearts make good models for human cardio-vascular work.”
In his personal research, Peters explores novel methods of drug design. delivery. Half of all drugs fail to make it into the marketplace because they can’t reach their targets, he explains. They can’t make it past the acids in the stomach, for instance, or they can’t slip through the blood-brain barrier. Sometimes they get absorbed where they shouldn’t be. By devising new strategies for getting past those barriers, he says, he hopes to help pharmaceutical companies increase the yield on their drug R&D.
With his pale skin, tussled hair, and slight, wiry frame, Peters has the look of a man who spends more time in a laboratory than out in the daylight. But he radiates intensity. He knows what it takes to catalyze change in academia. And, most importantly, he sees clearly which direction he wants to go. Having implemented change in a larger department at FSU, he’s confident that he can make the same things happen at VCU.
Peters’ first step is to define the scope of knowledge that a chemical engineering student needs to master. It will be an ambitious course of study. “In interdisciplinary programs, there are no short cuts,” Peters says. “You have to know the engineering, and you have to know the health and life sciences.”
Chem. Engineering majors will have to take cell biology, biological science 1 and 2, and genetics. That will give them the foundation to move on to more advanced work. At FSU, Peters developed a course of instruction that taught anatomy and physiology to engineering students, and he expects to do the same at VCU. Another advanced course likely will focus on how physiology impacts on drug design, while yet another will delve into stem-cell engineering.
While the curriculum will focus primarily on the life sciences at the molecular and cellular level, chemical engineering also intersects with environmental studies, Peters acknowledges. He sees great potential in collaborating with VCU’s Rice Environmental Institute to tailor a career in environmental science engineering.
The end result will be a different set of degrees. Chemical engineering majors will be allowed to select either a “life science” track or a “chemical” track. Likewise, graduate students will have a choice between “biomolecular and life science” engineering and “engineering/chemical” advanced degrees.
Once the curriculum is settled, the next step is deciding who will teach the courses. In some instances, Peters hopes to establish partnerships with professors in other VCU departments. In other cases, he plans to recruit faculty who bring new skills to campus.
“We have five six (?) faculty, including me , , and we will add two more this year,” Peters says. “The current faculty are extremely productive. They all have grad students, they all have research grants, and they all have active labs. … This is an ideal situation.”
Two of the faculty are engaged already in R&D with obvious biomedical applications. Anthony Guiseppie-Elie, who runs the Institute for Bioelectronics, Biosensors and Biochip, is developing implantable biochips that can monitor a soldier’s blood chemistry and determine within a flash the level of trauma sustained in a wound. Kenneth J. Wynne is investigating biocidal polymer coatings that could applied to everything from grocery store carts to doorknobs.
Peters expects to hire two professors on the bio engineering -chemical side and, possibly, one on the environmental engineering side. After that, further hires will be contingent upon the department’s ability to increase enrollment.
One key collaborator will be the eight-professor department of Biomedical Engineering on the VCU’s Medical College of Virginia campus. There is a significant overlap in the knowledge base required for both departments. The difference between Biomedical and Chemical engineering will be mainly a matter of emphasis, says Dr. Jerry Miller, the Biomedical Chair. Biomedical will interact primarily with the physicians on the medical campus, Chemical with the scientists on the academic campus. Biomedical research will have more immediate, medical-clinical applications; Chemical R&D, geared to molecular or micro-biological projects, will have longer payback times.
The existence of two departments that are closely aligned, but different, gives students more options, contends Peters. If students like working in a lab, developing cell cultures, investigating genetics, cracking proteins and conducting animal studies, they can major in Chemical engineering. If they prefer wearing white lab coats and looking on while doctors perform surgery, they’ll have that option at Biomedical engineering. In effect, VCU Engineering offers “one-stop shopping” in the biomedical-life science continuum.
Whichever way they lean, students and faculty alike will have access to a wider range of resources than ever before. “If they want to go into a clinical setting, they can,” Peters says. “If they want to get into stem cells and drug development and design, they can.”
