Ethics in Chemical Engineering at UCL
Ethics is embedded throughout Chemical Engineering at UCL, shaping how students approach engineering challenges and decision-making.
Ethics in chemical engineering extends well beyond academic integrity or the retrospective examination of past failures. It requires engineers to look forward, to anticipate the short and long-term consequences of their decisions, designs and innovations. Alongside the core professional competencies of safety and sustainability, ethical practice is a fundamental requirement for accreditation by the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) and an essential attribute of responsible engineering practice. The introduction of the Accreditation of Higher Education Programmes (AHEP) 4 has further sharpened the focus on ethical considerations within both engineering design and research-based projects.
In 2026, the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) and the Engineering Council revised their joint Statement of Ethical Principles, providing a shared framework for ethical conduct across the engineering profession. The statement sets out five core principles:
- Honesty and integrity
- Respect for life, the law, the environment and the public good
- Accuracy and rigour
- Leadership and communication
- Responsibility for the future of technology, society, and the environment
These principles are intended to guide engineers at all stages of their careers and underpin professional judgement, decision-making and responsibility. Full details of the statement are available on the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) website.
At UCL Chemical Engineering, these ethical principles are embedded across the curriculum, in all taught modules, to support the progressive development of ethical awareness and capability. Students develop competencies in professional and social responsibility, value-sensitive design, responsible innovation, moral sensitivity, moral judgement and decision-making, and ethical argumentation. Present and future engineering challenges demand solutions that are not only technically correct but also ethically just. Maintaining the relevance of the curriculum therefore requires continued attention to how ethics is taught, practised and assessed in the here and now.
Integration of ethics into the third-year process plant design capstone project
In the third‑year capstone design project, ethics has been treated as an integral part of engineering decision‑making rather than an add‑on. In 2023-24, students were tasked with advising a company on the adoption of first‑of‑its‑kind artificial intelligence (AI) technology for process operations, requiring them to weigh safety gains and economic resilience against data privacy, cybersecurity, workforce implications and third‑party governance. Students were expected to articulate a defensible ethical position under uncertainty, propose practical safeguards, and justify whether the project should proceed. The strength and maturity of students’ ethical reasoning was recognised with the inaugural UCL Faculty of Engineering Sciences and Centre of Engineering Education (FES-CEE) best ethical analysis in a design project award.
In 2024-25, the capstone project addressed ethical tensions surrounding large‑scale renewable energy developments linked to net‑zero ambitions. Students evaluated competing claims about economic growth, energy security and environmental benefit alongside concerns about land use, social justice, supply chains, community impact and long‑term decommissioning. Working with real‑world constraints and conflicting stakeholder interests, they developed balanced, evidence‑based recommendations for senior decision‑makers. For the second year running, the department’s embedding of ethics in authentic design contexts was recognised through a Faculty (FES-CEE) award, affirming the effectiveness of UCL Chemical Engineering’s approach to preparing graduates for responsible professional practice.
Figure 2: Third-year chemical engineering students with the Head of Department, Professor Eva Sorensen, receiving the inaugural FES-CEE award for best ethical analysis in a design project, 2023/24.
Figure 3: Third-year chemical engineering students with Dr Michaela Pollock, Associate Professor (Teaching), receiving the FES-CEE award for best ethical analysis in a design project, 2024/25.
Integration of ethics into debates
Ethics is also embedded through structured debates that run across several of our programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, where ethical reasoning is developed through active dialogue rather than abstract discussion. Students from previous years were trained by professionals from DebateMate, to construct clear, balanced arguments for and against a motion, to think on their feet, and to respond thoughtfully to challenge and scrutiny, often without time for advance preparation. Debate topics are drawn from contemporary issues such as emerging technologies, sustainability trade‑offs and societal risk, requiring students to engage with uncertainty, competing values and real professional pressures. Through this approach, students strengthen moral judgement, communication and leadership alongside their technical learning, ensuring ethical awareness is established early and reinforced throughout their programme as a core element of professional engineering practice.
Watch our UCL-DebateMate documentary
Student quotes
Mariam Sanni (MSc Sustainable Chemical Process Engineering)
“The debate forced me to confront a question I hadn’t fully considered: what does it mean to depend on a technology that hasn’t fully proved itself, when the consequences of being wrong fall on people who have no say in the decision? Being assigned a side shortly before the debate, rather than choosing one pushed me to stress-test ideas I might otherwise have accepted at face value. I particularly enjoyed delivering points of information with the right tone and clarity, without being combative, while maintaining respect for my opponent.”
Sultan Alhamdan (MSc Sustainable Chemical Process Engineering)
“The debates were a high-energy highlight of the programme, requiring us to be top ready to defend either side of a motion at a short notice. This fuelled us to look beyond technicalities and adopt the broader ethical impact of our work as chemical engineers. It was an enriching experience that merged personal competence, team collaboration and navigating political and social responsibilities of our field.”
Gary Yang (MSc Global Management of Natural Resources)
“I really enjoyed the debates because they made ethics feel more real and connected to chemical engineering, rather than just something theoretical. Hearing different opinions from classmates also helped me think about engineering decisions in a more open and balanced way.”
Sihas Jayasuriya (Third-year MEng Chemical Engineering)
“At the beginning, the debates seemed like another assignment with a different format. A week of independent research, then standing in front of students defending a position on a real ethical issue. But the back-and-forth stuck with me in a way lectures never did because you couldn’t absorb ideas passively. You had to defend them, respond on the fly, sit with being challenged. The debates developed my analytical skills which proved useful in the ethics section of my design project.”
Emma Shields (MSc Nature Inspired Engineering)
“I found the debate to be engaging because I had the chance to engage with issues that are relevant for an engineer in the modern world. I learned to approach ethics by considering all points of view, and I believe that the communication skills developed during this debate have prepared me to present my ideas clearly throughout my career.”
Holly Zhu (Fourth-year MEng Chemical Engineering)
“The Year 2 Scenarios debates were one of the first times I saw ethics as an active part of chemical engineering, rather than just something discussed in theory. They helped me think beyond whether a process simply works, and consider who it affects, what trade-offs are involved, and whether the decisions are responsible and sustainable. I enjoyed the debates because they encouraged us to listen to different viewpoints, explain our own ideas clearly, and think about problems where there was no simple right or wrong answer. This way of thinking has stayed with me in later design projects and my final thesis, and has helped me develop as an engineer who is not only technically focused, but also more thoughtful, responsible, and aware of the people behind engineering decisions.”
