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Can someone explain the difference between chemical engineering and material engineering (material science)?

Also, if I want to get into engineering and designing new drugs, what major should I take? (pharmacy, biomed eng., chemical eng., etc).

By Ariesathena (Ariesathena) on Saturday, July 10, 2004 - 01:45 am: Edit

I can try, as I did chemical engineering undergrad and work in materials science.

So, to answer your question: Not much. See above for reasoning.

Seriously though, chemical engineering is a lot of chemistry, math, and the "chemical engineering" courses. Most of those are in unit operations, things like thermodynamics, heat and mass transfer, and separations (think distillation towers). There are also courses in factory design, process controls (mathematical equations to design controllers that are used in factories), reactor design (basically, designing reactors for certain conditions), and experimental design. You may encounter a course in materials; I took some electives in polymers and surface/colloid chem, as that is what interested me.

Materials science, from what I understand, is the intersection of mechanical engineering and chemical engineering. You learn the mech-e part of stress, strain, all that good stuff. There is also the organic chemistry/polymer section, where you learn what specific compounds do what. This is a pretty poor description of materials in academia; I could give you a better description of what I work with.

Engineering and designing new drugs: Lots and lots of organic chemistry. When you're done with that, take some more. Biology obviously a good one as well, and some engineering background couldn't hurt. Whatever major will allow you to do that will probably work. Biology, biological engineering, biochem, or maybe chemical engineering might work. I know nothing about pharmacy besides the fact that it's a six-year programme, so I won't comment.

I wish I could give you more complete advice, but I actively avoided the bio side of life during undergrad. Feel free to ask more questions.