Focus areas for chemical engineers include energy production, catalysis, metabolic and cell engineering, nanomaterials and biomaterials, and systems engineering.Chemical engineers apply the principles of chemistry, biology, physics, and math to solve problems that involve the production or use of chemicals, fuel, drugs, food, and many other products. They design processes and equipment for large-scale manufacturing, plan and test production methods and byproducts treatment, and direct facility operations. Faculty research in this area deals with quantitative analysis and design of chemical and biochemical processes. The thematic focus is on developing models to describe, control and optimize process dynamics and outcomes. Methodologies of interest are: mechanistic modeling grounded in transport phenomena, statistical design of experiments, model-predictive control, data processing and dimensionality reduction, data-driven models, and parameter estimation for non-linear models. Application areas broad, and include: carbon dioxide capture, plant-wide control, materials processing, and production of biologics from fed-batch cultures of mammalian cells.