Dr. Vishwajeet Mehandia
Chemical Engineering started at the dawn of industrial revolution when chemicals needed to be produced at large scale. The field evolved out from Chemistry as Industrial Chemistry and later matured into Chemical Engineering that we know today. Chemical engineers are needed to mass produce useful products from raws materials economically. This involves the design and optimisation of several equipments and processes that are complexly integrated. They also need to understand how to build process plants that operate with novel processes to manufacture products at a scale never seen before.
Chemical Engineering is multidisciplinary, it is also one of the broadest engineering discipline which is always in high demand. Due to its application in variety of industries, including oil, energy, mining, chemical and food production, environment and water treatment, it can be very well defined as “the union of Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Mathematics, and Economics to refine and add value to raw materials and to develop and optimise chemical processes, often at an industrial scale”. This definition captures the subjects, which are required and relied upon by chemical engineers as well as the key functions of the Chemical Engineering. The diverse skillset acquired by Chemical Engineers make their demand very high in various industries, organisations, and academia. In today’s times, when sustainability, pollution and environment have become most important, Chemical Engineering can provide the solution by inventing novel equipments and processes to produce valuable products that are sustainable, which also takes care of the environment by minimising the pollution levels.
The Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Ropar was established in 2017 to meet the local and global demand for the new and innovative ways to sustainably produce the required products with minimal environmental damage. Since then, we have grown to the size of 14 core faculty members who are highly recognised in their own respective areas of research. All of our faculty members are young and highly motivated to train the next generation of Chemical Engineers.
We are committed to train our students in all the required disciplines and impart them with both theoretical and practical knowledge of Chemical Engineering. At the undergraduate level, we train new students in the basics of Chemical Engineering and our Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech.) program curriculum is at par with not only other IITs, but also with some of the best international universities. At the post graduate level, we have a Master of Technology (M.Tech.) program which is a more specialised than the undergraduate program. In this program, courses are designed to train students at the advance level of Chemical Engineering principles. We also have Ph.D. program where we train students to conduct specialised research in various aspects of Chemical Engineering. We are proud that, our research output is of very high quality and is recognised all over the world.
Our students at all level are highly sought-after, as they have the required skill set to work in a variety of industries as well as academia. As our society continues to develop in population and technological advancements, the expertise of Chemical Engineers will become even more essential to help solve challenging problems such as energy demands, food production and sustainable development. With new technologies constantly on the horizon, Chemical Engineers will always have exciting careers waiting for them!
Prof. Vishwajeet Mehandia: Head Of Department of Chemical Engineering