Learn how we are shaping the future through research
We aim to create pioneering breakthroughs in science and technology and seek solutions to Grand Challenges (such as energy, reducing carbon dioxide emissions, materials, sustainable manufacturing, health and environment), based on significant advances in fundamental knowledge. To this end, we collaborate widely with other departments in UCL Engineering, Chemistry and beyond, as well as various academic and industrial research groups.
Explore our Disruptive Thinkers videos, research themes, cross-disciplinary centres, application areas, and facilities and equipment below. You can also read about our vision and priorities for research.
Research Themes
Discover the research themes within the UCL Department of Chemical Engineering.
Cross-disciplinary Centres
Find out more about our research centres working across multiple disciplines.
Facilities and Equipment
UCL Chemical Engineering has access to a range of state of the art facilities and equipment.
Driving sustainable innovation through chemical engineering research
Our current awareness of the world’s finite material and energy resources demands that these products are obtained in a sustainable, efficient and environmentally acceptable fashion and that new energy solutions are implemented. Within this exciting and demanding context, the Department of Chemical Engineering develops innovative and impactful technological solutions that leverage advances in basic science. We address Global Grand Challenges in the domains of:
- Advanced Manufacturing
- CO2 Emission Reduction, Energy and Sustainability
- Materials
- Health
Our work is based on responsible innovation and is underpinned by digitisation and data-driven engineering; our unique problem-solving skills and systems thinking; and our ability to link first-principles theory, computation and experimentation with state-of-the-art characterisation across all relevant length scales from molecules to products, devices and processes. The context of our research is guided by the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the UK Industrial Strategy, and our work fits within UCL’s Grand Challenges, in particular on Transformative Technology, as well as Global Health and Sustainable Cities.
Vision
We seek to consolidate our position among the top-3 chemical engineering departments in the UK and Top 20 in the world. We strive for excellence across the board, via seamless integration of research, teaching and knowledge transfer. We aspire to be the first choice for the most talented applicants, and sought after as a preferred partner for research and industrial collaborations. We want to maintain our position as a global leader, because of our creative, scientific scholarship, interdisciplinary approach to research and problem solving and engineering effectiveness.
- Championing new technologies to create the next generation of battery and fuel cell vehicles and hybrid systems, via the cross-faculty Electrochemical Innovation Laboratory and underpinned by the 700 m2 Advanced Propulsion Laboratory at UCL East.
- Developing technologies for the production of clean hydrogen as a next generation fuel along with carbon capture storage and utilisation, empowering the net-zero carbon UK government agenda.
- Developing manufacturing technologies for chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and functional materials for a carbon-constrained future, taking advantage of the 1500 m2 interdisciplinary Manufacturing Futures Laboratory at UCL East.
- Establishing UCL as the UK focus for nature-inspired engineering to develop innovative solutions for grand challenges within energy, water, materials, health and living space, building on the unique methodology developed at the Centre for Nature-Inspired Engineering.
- Influencing the digital revolution through our involvement in the Sargent Centre of Process Systems Engineering.
- Increasing our visibility via timely publications in leading peer-reviewed journals, monographs, IP disclosures, training of postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers, and integration of research in education at undergraduate and postgraduate level.
- Securing funding from national and international sources to progress our ambitious research goals.
- Consolidating existing and building new (UCL/UK/international) academic and industrial strategic partnerships that allow us to address new challenges more effectively and open up opportunities for funding for research and education, knowledge transfer and impact activities.
- Facilitating relations with industry, developing high-impact partnerships and engaging our students in industrially relevant projects, supported by our Industrial Advisory Board.
- Accelerating impact, innovation and enterprise by transfer of knowledge to stakeholders via industrial collaboration and public engagement activities, and by establishing start-ups.
- Building strong, interdisciplinary, outward-looking research groups capable of bidding successfully in themes of high strategic importance, notably those of significance in energy, manufacturing, environment, health and sustainability.
- Recruiting of excellent researchers, as well as academic and technical staff to meet the requirements of the Department’s strategic needs and goals.
- Expanding our research infrastructure, particularly through our involvement with the UCL East laboratories.
- Engaging with strategic research activities and initiatives where we have key strengths: electrochemical engineering, integrated catalysis and reaction engineering, process and product engineering, multiphase systems, molecular thermodynamics, and functional materials.”
REF 2021
In the latest Research Evaluation Framework (REF 2021), 97% of our submission rated as either “world leading” (4*) or “internationally excellent” in the Engineering Unit of Assessment at UCL.
