Chemical & Biological Engineering New Graduate Student Overview

Everybody, I just wanted to make sure my videos working um.

Everybody that we expect to be on his on 'cause I haven't seen anybody else is video.

Who is Sheldon? We can't hear you.

Can people hear Maine?

A Merlot I can also hear you.

Morning everybody.

Maybe we'll do quick introductions while Sheldon fixes his microphone so the person you can hear is Doctor Park. He's the director of graduate studies for our Department. I'm mark sweetheart. I'm the Department chair, and we're also seeing Marlow, who is our academic coordinator. The face of the department for many of our grad students. And Ted, who is.

PhD student in the Department.

Morning everybody.

It.

During the presentation, feel free to ask any questions in the chat and will try to answer them as quickly as possible so.

Great, we'll just wait for Doctor Park and will get started I guess.

It might be the UM slate itself, like maybe log out and log back in.

This is the.

This is everyday lately, uh, some some issue with.

Zoom or whatever the the app of the day is, so no worries. I'm sure he'll be back in.

So we got a lot of participants, that's good.

Hey there is.

No.

No luck.

Can't hear your voice.

Um?

Do you have to select the microphone as the input that your computer make the wrong default choice?

Me.

So when you click broadcast video to come up.

It tells you which Mike in which camera it's using, uhm.

Maybe try like popping out of the video and then when you pop back in check whether it's a Mike that you want.

All right, everybody, just, uh, hang on. Hopefully doctor Park will be back with the is microphone working this uh.

Worked fine in the trial run.

Yeah.

Yeah, Meanwhile if you have questions or comments or just wanna chat.

Chat in the chat box.

And, uh.

Yeah.

I.

Thanks for everyone's patience. Sorry for the delay.

Yeah, it could be Slater. It could be.

Um?

So we're getting some questions in the comments about the COVID-19 situation on campus.

Uhm, does anyone have anything to say about that?

There's still a lot of uncertainty about the fall semester.

Um, so for sure. The classes are online for the rest of the spring semester and for the summer. For chemical engineering, we just do a few.

Undergraduate classes in the summer and those are available online anyway, so you know the uncertainty is with fall, right? So many of our students are calling in from India where they're not doing any visa interviews right now. So right now we're working.

Hello.

**** ** sort of different scenarios. I was on the phone zoom call with the Provost of the president last Friday with some of the other Department chairs, and they're doing a lot of scenario planning, so different possibilities ranging from you know. Alright, he's here.

Oh yeah.

Right, so there's a whole range of possibilities for fall from, you know, everything is back to normal, which is seeming less and less likely to everything is online to somewhere in between.

Um, and we're hoping to pull together.

In the event that students can't get a visa, were hoping to pull together at least a partial semester worth of courses that folks could do online from abroad, wherever they are. Sort of a secret asynchronous online learning so we don't have to be on at a certain time in case people are still having jobs and things.

And then students who weren't able to get a visa for fall could join in spring and not miss a whole semester. But at this point we don't have any of the details of that worked out. It really depends on how the situation evolves over the next month or two.

Right?

Um, let's go ahead and let Sheldon, Uh, give me order the presentation, which I think will answer a bunch of the questions that are popping up and then will answer more questions after that.

So I'm gonna pop.

Alright, sounds good.

Thank you Mark. Um, I'm sorry about the technical difficulties. Uh, it worked on Friday when we test drove this and I was sure that everything would go without a problem this morning. But of course a lot can happen over the weekend and it sure did so well. Thanks everyone for being patient and and coming to this orientation.

You know, we try to do this in person.

You know, in in an ordinary situation, but because of the Kobiet 19 we have to move to an online format format and but I'm glad that a lot of people are participating today. Thank you for coming and depending on where you are, good morning, Good afternoon and good evening.

So I think we kind of got past the introduction of earlier and my name is Sheldon Park and I'm the graduate director in the Department and so on. The next slide I listed the names of the people who are participating today and we already had introduction and I see Ted, but I think the other students might not be here as of earlier today.

And Jennifer Gamel from CS School of engineering and Applied Sciences is also attending. Thank you.

Uh, for those of you who aren't familiar with where we're located at in the country. In this map of the United States.

New York State and Buffalo are located in the northeastern part of the country. This is the state of New York and we are on the western end of the state, bordering Canada, about a 2 hour drive from Toronto.

So you be by the numbers just to give you an idea of where we stand in terms of Statistics where number one public University in the state of New York, where a top ranking University in the country according to the US news and World Report, and.

I like this. We have over 30,000 students enrolled currently. As of last year, more than 10,000 students who are in the graduate program or professional programs. We are among the top 25 US institutions are hosting a large number of international students, so we have a very diverse body of student body. There are three campuses, North, South and downtown. The North campus is where we are situated.

Chemical Engineering Department is in the North North Campus which is in the town of Amherst, about 10 miles North of Buffalo.

So we are part of the school of engineering and Applied Sciences, which is the engineering school which contributes roughly 25% of the school budget to the University. So it's pretty significantly significant. Important school within the.

Context of the University.

Are there are nine Department of which we are one?

So we are very diverse and vibrant Department with over 25 faculty members currently, most of whom are in the tenure track and we also have some.

Teaching staff teaching professors. We will have two more joining us in the spring of 2021, bringing us up to 27.

So the faculty members in the Department work on many different types of innovative work. There are broadly grouped into 3 first biochemical and biomedical engineering, roughly 8 faculty members are primarily focused in research in this area.

Uh, the second is Nanoscale Science and engineering which deals with material science and things.

Computational science and engineering brings up the rear with about 8 faculty members.

So we are nationally ranked program at ranked at 36 nationally according to the US news and World Report.

Um?

Tide with us many a well known programs in the country, including Case Western Reserve University, University of Houston, University of Massachusetts AT Amherst.

UFC or University of Southern California and yell University.

Our graduates are find good jobs in industry after graduation. This applies to both PhD students and Masters students. They move on to work at companies from the Fortune 500 list with international name recognition shown here.

Others are move on to academic positions. These are students who want to become professors and stay in academia. They would go on to continue to train at high ranking universities.

The students in the Department, when they graduate they have been very, very innovative and demonstrated their entrepreneurship and several companies were started by PhD students in recent years and I highlight some of them here and you. Graft was started by Syndero a few years ago and it's.

A tissue engineering lab, a tissue engineering company that specializes in making engineered vessels for commercialization.

So this would be for a heart patient suffering from heart attack and bypass surgeries and so on.

Mahmood Amedee was was a student in metabolic engineering and he used secondary metabolites to create a matrix that is used to recover a precious metals from industrial wastewaters.

Charles Jones are worked on.

Fraction development and he went on to found a company called at Cambie Sciences which seeks to develop vaccines.

A Param, Rohani, Uh, was a material scientist, and in the spirit of renewable energy, he founded a company called Nano Hydro that uses nanoparticles to generate hydrogen gas from water.

There are a lot of institutes and centers and programs are in and around you be that are relevant to the research going on in the chemical engineering Department, and they include the two centers of excellence, one in Bioinformatics and life Sciences, sybils, and the other in materials informatics CMI. So these are state senators and their house.

Restart charge who with with excellent track record and they specialize in these particular areas. There is also at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute world without Cancer Center KPI, which is where the focus on taking technology development out of labs to clinical settings.

CCR is a Center for computational research, and they provide the resources needed to Super Computing.

Knees, so when you're doing high highly.

Intensive computational work, then CR would provide the resources needed for that we knew is a University initiative that promotes renewable energy research into renewable energy and environment and water on their other programs, including IC DS mdai

I wear the the research is going on that overlaps with much of what we do in our Department.

So in the chemical Department, a chemical engineering Department here we offer several graduate degrees, including the Doctor of philosophy, which is the highest degree that we offer we the PhD. The purpose of the PhD program is to cultivate the next generation of leaders in the field.

Uh, and this is a very intensive program that lasts four to six years depending on the particular program you are in, it's a very.

Post program designed to.

Uh, to grow leaders for the future. This comes with full financial support. We also offer several flavors of measures program. The principle objective of the Masters program is to train students in the field in their respective field defined positions in industry, government, or if they want to they.

To help them continue their study toward achieving PhD.

So the measures degree.

Comes in several different flavors. As I said, what some of them are research based and they include a measure of science with thesis, which is considered track one or Ms Project which is considered track 2.

There is also a course based Master of Science track three. There is a separate master of Engineering Program or me which is similar to Master of Science. Track one and two, but a bit shorter and design for those who don't have an engineering background. Masters degree typically take about one to two years to complete depending on the particular.

Research you are involved in.

Um, important thing about the Masters program to to remember is the high mobility that is afforded to the students among the measures programs.

For instance Ms, we have tracks 1, two and three, and then there is me depend. You may come in at into either program, either as a master of student or Ms student or me student, but having entered entered.

One of the programs, depending on your circumstance, you may choose to switch to a different program, and that may be more appropriate for you. It depending on your eventual career, aspiration or how you.

Manage through the program so there is a high mobility you can you can. You can switch from one program to another in consultation with your advisor overtime.

Um, another attractive feature of our Masters program is that after completing Master of Science track one or two thesis or project, some students may be invited to join PhD program. So these are the high performing students who do exceptionally well in the Masters program. They again, in consultation with their advisors. They may choose to stay on as PhD student.

So this, uh, is, uh, a relatively painless process.

By the time you are done with your Ms study, but there will be a consensus as to whether you are appropriate for the PhD program. And once we conclude that it is the right option for you, then we can expedite that process and you can enter the PhD program.

You know relatively easily, so that is it's a feature that we have not. Not every Masters program in the country would offer that, so this is a good stepping stone for a lot of Masters students who.

Who may be entering the Masters program because they are not sure whether a PhD program is the right one for them. So we offer this transitional.

Period, I suppose are you could think of it that way.

You know, coming as a master's student, work on research for a couple of beers and if you like it and if you find yourself capable of doing it, then you can continue as a PhD student.

So that that's something that a lot of students find attractive and it has worked brilliantly over the years and every year we have a number of measures students moving onto the PhD program.

Alright, so I'm gonna talk about the remaining 1520 minutes or maybe not even 20 minutes about about the program in a bit more detail.

I see that on the uh in the chat window that people have been submitting their questions and please continue to do that. I try to cover the main points about the program, but there are a lot of details that I can't go over and in a real life situation where we are meeting face to face, we may be able to answer them.

More easily, but in this particular setting, I think.

Directing your questions to the chat window an.

Having someone answer that directly as I present out might be might be an acceptable alternative, so please continue to do that. I think that there are a lot of interesting questions that are being posted.

So I will talk about the program a little, a little more and these are maybe what you are really interested in learning about today. In particular, will discuss the advisor selection process, which.

Not surprisingly, is an important topic that a lot of people are curious about. How do I join a group? When does that happen and do I get to pick my pic? My lab so I will tell you a little bit about the advisor selection process.

Followed by, uh, some requirements that are specific for each program, PhD and Masters. As you can imagine, they have different requirements and different timeline and I wouldn't be able to go over them in.

Too much detail, but, uh, those documents that list the requirements are available on the website, and so you can go check it out yourself and also these slides that I'm presenting today will be available to you after the the orientation. So you could look at them more carefully, even though I may be going through the slides a little little fast.

Um and the requirements along with the requirements, I will discuss the courses that students typically take at a different time points in their career, and this is also available online.

Uhm, you can use it as a template. It's not, it's not.

I it's not fixed, it just a recommendation for how one might go about taking various courses, can you? You may want to keep that in mind. So How do I? How do you go about selecting an advisor or lab now? This slide applies to all students. Doesn't matter whether you're a PhD or Masters.

Everyone is going to go through exactly the same process. OK, so the way it works in our Department is first of all in the fall when you come during during the month of September, usually in September, we set aside a few days in a week.

Say second week of September or something like that and several days in a row. Every professor in the Department will go up one person at a time and present a 30 minute summary of their research. So this will be scheduled so that the presentation doesn't overlap with the class. Is that a lot of people are taking, so we have this fixed time when you get to see the professors and hear about their research.

And this goes on for awhile there as I showed you earlier, there are 25 professors and by next year it'll be 27. So there are a lot of professors who want to recruit students and they will all go up there and then talk for 30 minutes describing their work and after the presentation is over, which can be overwhelming. I mean to students who are listening to this for the first time.

Keeping track of who said what can be very very challenging. So, uh, so the presentation itself is only a Supreme are. It's only get you started, but what you need to do is students will then reach out to the professors afterwords to set up individual meetings. So this will you will have about you will have a month about a month to do this, so you contact the professors.

And say that you're interested in meeting with them? Uh, so you set up a time and you go and visit and have private meetings with the professors.

And we are asked every student to do this with fives, professors or more. 5 is a good number to give you a sense of what is going on in the Department and whether you.

Make sure that you know you've covered the ground, so if you're interested in more than five, that's fine too. But at least, uh, meet with five separate professors in the Department talk. Talk to them about your your research interests and find out what they do.

Uh and having done that you will submit your preferences. You'll rank them and say, I like this professor. That's my is my he or she is my top choice and in my second choice is such and such and third choice and so on, and so forth so after meeting with those professors you will rank them and then you will submit your preferences on sheet. So you fill out the form and then and then you submit it.

And I will collect them and then after everyone has submitted their preferences, I will begin to contact individual professors and find a an arrangement that works out for everyone that is acceptable to everybody. So I will start out with the number one choice and asked the advisor that so and so has picked you as number one. Would you be willing to accept that student into your group?

And if for whatever reason the professor says no, hopefully that doesn't happen. But suppose that does happen, then I will move on to number 2 second choice, an ask the same question until I find a group that is willing to take the student and the student is willing to join that group. So this is a mutual agreement I would like to come to a consensus that makes everybody happy.

Uh.

I I'm not, maybe not everybody will be happy, but I try to optimize the process so as much as possible.

So this goes on for a few weeks, so you have about four weeks to contact the professors and submit your preferences and I will spend the rest of the semester talking to the advisors an figure out.

The mapping arrangement right student this, which then goes to which lab?

So final lab arrange a arrangement will be made by the end of the semester ended announced by the the end of the fall semester. So before the winter break you will hear from me and the Department that you have been assigned to a particular lab.

Alright, so then that brings you up to the winter break and then you need to talk to your advisor to see what the expectations are for their winter break. Winter break is the middle of December and an end of January, so that we're talking about a month, month of break so that that can be that time period. It can be used very productively if you want, if you like.

All right, uh? Particular PhD requirements, so there are some required courses that you have to take their qualifying exams and courses. I'm going to get to in just a few minutes few minutes, and then qualifying exams one and two. There's one acui, one at the end of the second semester, and it's involved literature review. It's a survey of a research topic that you summarize and present in QE tool.

Oh, also called the proposal. Defense happens at the end of the third semester, meaning the fall semester of the second year, and it is a proposal research proposal which describes the studies that that you are going to perform for the rest of your PhD.

And you would present that proposal and defend their proposal in Forever Dissertation Committee that you assemble by that time. You're expected to have collected some preliminary research data and that will be part of the presentation. And after you are done with Q1 and Q2, you are considered PhD candidate. And from then on you are expected to focus all your attention on research and make progress you.

Or asked to meet with a dissertation committee once a year for an annual committee meeting and that is recorded and end required for registration in subsequent semesters. So that is important. And finally, you would complete your dissertation and it defended in our public defense.

So these are the courses that you would be taking in terms of the credit requirements and then the courses for PhD. 72 credit hours are required and some this and both Masters and PHD's. There are some requirements in terms of taking courses, so lecture courses, lecture based courses where you go in and listen to the lecture and submit homework assignments and so on.

There are 24 credits of such credit required for PhD, and the details are listed.

Further down.

So you get to choose. You have some option in terms of how you make up those 24 credits, but those are the requirements and there are some other other requirements in terms of performing lab duties, performing research in the laboratory, those are considered.

You know you are given credit for the work and they add up to finally 272 credits. And this is, uh.

Sample of how PhD courses are spread out over the years, and there's a lot of information here. You can look at it more carefully. There's a URL at the top that you can go to.

I turn the website and you can study this more carefully.

The finally, after you're done with the course work and and having performed brilliantly search, you would be defending your dissertation. You assemble a dissertation committee and it'll be a public defense to the committee as well as your classmate and your family members or people from other departments. The dissertation is announced in a public Forum Forum.

And, uh, people will come and listen to your presentation an that there will be a question and answer period afterwards.

And then and then you're done.

Uh, if you're in Master of Science, a track one or attract two, uh, the horse requirement requirements are as follows. All Masters programs require 30 credits of class for completion. Track one and two. There are 18 credits of lecture lecture courses that you need to complete and their list listed here.

So again, there are some restrictions as to what you should take and not, but there's a lot of freedom in how you shape your.

Course work.

So these are again templates for Master of Science track one course planning, which takes roughly 2 years to complete. In some cases it may take a little longer than two years, especially if your research is going slowly. About two years is a good starting point. I would say the majority of the students finish in two yards.

National, a Master of Science track tool, is almost identical to track one with the exception of this CE 504 in the final semester, and that is the only distinguishing feature between track one and track tool, and this 504 says you're completing a project as opposed to track one that says you are completing a thesis, but otherwise those two are nearly identical.

Track one and track too. They they both need a committee thesis committee and you need to work with the committee and you need to defend your word. But in in track one you would complete a thesis that is submitted to the University for approval, whereas attract tool only requires a project report that is submitted to the committee. So the requirements are little lax.

Or check to compared to track one.

MSI track three is somewhat of a different.

Nature it's a course based Masters meaning unlike track one and track two, both of which are research based Masters. Track three is a course based Masters an you can complete it out quicker and by taking classes exclusively without any research credit. You need 24 credits of CE lecture courses and you can supplement that if you like with some lecture credits.

I'm sorry, lab credit so or it could also involve internship or.

Are you better at a company? This is MSMS track three is is also a little bit different than track one and two in that the culminating experience. What comes at the end of the program is not the submission of either a thesis or project based on research, but rather the completion of a comprehensive exam, and I'm going to come to that in just a second. So track three is a shorter.

A program that can be completed in one year starting from the the fall semester through winter, spring and summer, and depending on how you shape your programs. Of course it you could be done by the spring semester as well.

Um so this, uh, uhm is a one year program and good for those who want to move on, get their degrees and then move on to something else to job say.

The final, uhm? The culminating experience for track three is what's called a comprehensive exam an for for us. What that means is, is.

Compilation of a of an E portfolio which is just a collection of exams and tests and quizzes that from the classes that you have taken that addresses the program learning objectives described underneath ABC and D and you collect those works and annual separately. Compile a word file. Prepare a word file that describes how each work address is the.

Program learning objectives. An I would look at the work and and I would also meet with the students to complete the comprehensive exam. So that is the gist of the comprehensive exam eastport eportfolio. That is part one and Part 2 is a survey.

And at this information is also available online. You can go to our website and read about it.

Picture of Engineering is a different. A different separate program that we offer it similar. It's also research based Masters in that a student would come into the lab and perform research in the process of completing me.

Oh so in that sense. I mean, it's very similar to Ms track one inch track two, both of which are research based programs. The main differences me was designed for those students without engineering background, so there they may have majored in biology or chemistry or polymer science and so on. An they're transitioning to chemical engineering.

So because of the the difference in in their background, they May.

Find some of the courses, um, somewhat challenging.

Um an and it to accommodate those students? Uh, you know, our research is very, very diverse, and it's not the traditional chemical engineering focusing on petroleum industry hours is very, very modern chemical engineering. So people couldn't measure in chemical engineering and get a A Post Baccalaureate degree without having to.

Take some of these essential what's considered a core chemical engineering classes? At least that's our take on the on the program. So we offer master of engineering.

Oh, so that the students can take advantage of it by.

Going through the research program but without the requirement of having to take some some of the required courses for Ms so you still need 30 credits of.

Flash both lectures and lab credit but there is no particular requirement as to what you need to take right so that makes it a little more convenient for those without the chemical engineering background so this is a course planning guide for me once again a recommendation as opposed to a requirement you can look at it to get some idea of how typical me student might.

Might go through their program I can take 1.51 and a half year to 2 years depending on your particular research you could combine lab research lab experience with internship at a company in order to satisfy the culminating experience requirement.

So specialization uh uh within me so this is available within currently within me alone by taking a group of related classes you can get a certification.

Signed by the Dean of the school of engineering and Applied Sciences that says that you have satisfied the requirements to obtain a certificate in in the following four areas. Biotechnology modeling chemistry an energy. So this is something that you might like to think about as you go about choosing your classes. So this is explained on the website as well.

So, just to summarize, the different measures programs, because we have several measure of science, we offered first of all track one and check tool and the difference is there very very similar. The only differences in track one you are going to submit a thesis to the committee whereas in track tool you're submitting a project report to the advisor. It's actually not to the advisor to the committee as well.

And attract 3A is a course based Master of Science. So the the program is in red are class based learning and then the programs in blue are the research based learning. So attract three. This is the course based Masters. It can be completed quickly more quickly than the other programs and the.

And and tried one and two uh students when they complete. If they have performed well, they may be invited to join PhD program and then there is also the Master of Engineering where the student would submit a project report to the advisor. In this case, it's just to the advisor because there is no committee for me. So just to summarize, presentation today.

So you be a chemical engineering is a nationally ranked program. We re ranked very highly as.

Tested by the US news in the World Report annually and we have a very diverse body of students are coming from many different countries so that you know that might be palatable. To manage students. I think it promotes, promotes creative thinking and we offer research in many different areas including bio materials and computation and as a result we.

Uh, I will cater to a very wide range of interest. An offer. Opportunities in areas that are not available elsewhere, so we have a PhD program that takes somewhere between four to six years to complete. It is fully funded program. Students can focus on their research without having to worry about how to pay for food and housing.

And In addition to PhD.

We we have Masters program several different Masters program so you can choose whichever program that fits you the best.

UM, the programs are very, very flexible and there's a high mobility among Master of Science and master of engineering degrees, so you can move from one to the other as needed. And if you do well as an Ms student, you may be invited to to enter the PhD program, and once you and your advisor come to an agreement, and that is pretty much a guarantee for acceptance. So that is that is something that.

A lot of students find appealing beyond academic strength in the program. I also want to highlight some of the good things about this area at the low cost of living in Buffalo Buffalo. And as I mentioned earlier, we are in the town of Amherst outside Buffalo. It's very safe neighborhood, very, very quiet, and the cost of living is just terrific compared to many other parts of the country.

Or we offer a culturally stimulating environment. There are lots of things going on in the town of Buffalo. And also we're not too far from Toronto, which is a big city in Canada. So people travel to quite often as well, and we're in a place where you don't have to worry about tornadoes and hurricanes. and I think that that that's also great. We got a little bit of snow, but.

Not as much as people think we do, so I think so. We have a favorable geographical location as well, so this is some pictures from the neighborhood and there is a picture of Niagara Falls up there in the upper right hand corner. It's a beautiful town and lots of cultural and sports activities. Buffalo Bills and.

Sabres the hockey team so.

So that's it. So I invite more questions and will stay around for the next. I don't know, however minute however minutes and answering questions, but if you have questions that aren't answered today, I also invite you to send us an email and inquire more. The I will put up the contact information again, so these are the names of the people who are attending today.

Uh, just feel free to email us and we'll be happy to reach out to you.

OK, thank you everybody.

So we'll stay online and an uhm continue to answer questions.

So I think we could all turn on the, uh.

The video I guess back you know video back on and then and then answer questions.

I did.

Hey.

I'm not.

Hello.

I see a lot of questions. Uh, an answer is going by every 2nd I see something going up.

So people have been posting a lot of questions, huh?

Is there anything that you think I should address any question that came up repeatedly perhaps?

No.

You're just answered with about a lot of questions about internships too.

OK, well internship opportunities are our vailable, but it's it's. It's not as standard as some of the courses. Unfortunately we have full control over what we offer every every semester, but internships.

Individualized, so students need to take an initiative in terms of finding an opportunity an, but I I want to say I'm not really in charge of management internship program, but I want to say that when it wants to.

I didn't touch it. They usually do manage to land one eventually an somewhere around here and somewhere a little bit farther away, but one way or another they managed to identify a position and go spend at summer.

Uh, and I I think that has worked out beautifully and people.

Especially I want I want to mention before I forget the internship is is it's commonly done time astral engineering students and not I. Obviously not AG students who are expected to be in the lab until they graduate and similarly Master of Science in track tool because they're rich.

Their expectations from their advisors to be spending too. Whatever you spend time in the lab make make progress rather than going off to do internship, so internship is not more for natural engineering students and they they do land a position and I think.

Golden could you um.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're getting some weird thing with your voice it's kind of Darth Vader E UM one thing that might help is for a Ted and marlo anaita almut and see if that if some kind of feedback thing.

That's probably, yeah, that could very well be the case.

How many speakers, microphones turned down and there's a need back so it sounds weird.

Even even with the microphone turned off on your side.

Yeah that didn't fix it it's weird you're very like Darth Vader E uhm.

Yeah.

Yeah what if we all just pop out 'cause it was OK when you're doing the presentation.

OK sure thing.

OK so I was saying that the Master of engineering students do find internship and I think that the faculty who are in charge of doing Masters they semester engineering internship. They have some experience and in terms of.

No guiding English student. I'm pointing them in the right direction so they managed to to learn something.

It's still really garbled being popping out and back in.

Not.

Really OK, so it was fine until you you decided to log in.

The broadcast

Sorry.

So what about that so?

Yep.

Yeah, kisses is my voice still traveled out.

Yeah, sorry.

And then, and even after you mute your video, is it still the same?

Right?

You

Right, well, maybe I can talk you. You come through just fine. Maybe just.

Yeah, maybe just let Tedder I field some questions for awhile and and see how it goes, uhm?

There was one that I was just answering in the chat about the UM.

The.

Um internships for Ms students and my comment would just be that, you know. I've had quite a few of my Ms students over here to my group that have done internship.

Um, unlike the internship, can be the basis for your me project, particularly for Ms thesis students.

Typically nothing from the internship goes into the thesis and so you know if you leave for three or four months in the summer to do an internship that may delay graduation by, say, six months, right? Because you not only lose the time that you're gone, but you lose. You know whatever progress you started to make in the first in the spring and your second semester. You know the concept project keeps rolling on without you.

Um?

And sometimes the project rolls away completely. Uhm, I think, uh.

Show the new member eBay. Remember puja who started in your group.

And went away for an internship and I think she like extended it through the fall or something. She was gone like 6 or 8 months.

And she came back in the project was just like had gone away and she ended up switching to my group, which is like a couldn't be more different in terms of research area and so basically you know she end up doing a Ms with thesis, but in just something completely different than what she started in and so that's sort of the risk if you come.

If you start a thesis and then go do a long project, uhm.

You know it extends the time. Uhm, but you know she also once you put in, for example when she graduated, she got a job right away. She's doing great as far as I know, right? So in the scheme, if it took her an extra 6 or 8 months to graduate, it's probably not a crisis.

Oh

Right, right, right I. I think everybody is. My voice still messed up.

Just shut up.

Yeah, so it works much more smoothly with the Master of engineering.

Or even the the track. Three non research Ms.

Be'cause you could use.

Yes.

In either case, you could use sort of 6 credits of internship that count toward the degree. Uhm, whereas you know you could further with the thesis or Ms Project. I mean you can register for a couple of credits that count towards a degree for the internship as part of being eligible for curricular practical training. But it won't.

The work doesn't really contribute to your thesis, and it's getting the thesis done to let you graduate.

If I may add my 2 cents on this while having a full blown internship might not be.

What?

A possibility for some there might be an opportunity to do collaborations with industry. You might still be contributing some work that you're doing in your thesis that might also help a company out. I mean, that's kind of what I was doing. I was developing pipelines and computational tools that were going to help my thesis as well as this company. So depending on the collaborations that your advisor may have with industry, they might reach out and say we need to graduate student to help us with this project. You might be able to take that work.

And put it into your thesis somehow. I mean, for me that's how it worked and I know that there's some other people that have the same experience.

Just wanted to add my 2 cents.

Good point, uhm a couple other internship things, uhm.

Relatively few of our PhD students do internships, but there are some project. So doctor lin's had a couple of these where the funding is from the Department of Energy and an internship at a Department of Energy Lab is like part of the grant.

We just got a center granted mechanical engineering that I'm part of. It's not lead Piers in mechanical engineering. It's in mechanical, chemical, computer science and that one actually all of the PhD students will be required to do an internship at one of the DOD labs. And so there are cases like that, but.

Um?

Right.

Not.

It's it's less, uh, less common.

Um?

Owen just on that. The idea of other things besides internship.

The like, for instance, one of my students now Shima an before her, another guy. Actually, she's the third person that I've just sort of a small project with a startup company that they funded like.

Little bits of work in the lab. Uhm, and so it's not like a full blown research assistantship. But each of those three students, my ration division, oshima, have worked with like doing experiments for this company, interacting directly with their sort of like Setio, who's probably three years older than they are.

And you know getting paid like on an hourly basis, right? For something, that's like a side project, not really what their thesis is about. Uhm, but it's good experience in terms of working with the company, delivering a little more professional reports and that sort of thing.

Absolutely yeah.

Something nice to put on your resume. I collaborated with the company. I accomplished these monthly goals. I contributed this IP within reason, but.

I think that's right. I think that's really nice to have on your resume.

There's a question. Could you please elaborate the scope of environmental flash energy related projects in the University?

I guess that's a really broad question, so we have, uhm.

You know, within the Department, individual research groups doing a lot of energy and environment related work.

Certainly Professor Wood lab, which is electrochemistry focus a lot of their work is fuel cells. Little bit on batteries, a little bit on Electro chemical, synthesis of materials, right? So for example, the chemicals for example electrochemical production of ammonia from renewable energy versus the traditional haberbusch process would have just.

Ginormous environmental impact.

Doctor Lynn's group does both gas phase and solution phase membrane separation research. So, in the solution side, that desalination, pollution, abatement, that sort of thing on the gas side. It's two capture. That sort of thing. My group is doing.

Some battery work, uh, some catalysis work in collaboration with doctor linen. Dr London Doctor Kerry Okkadu That's mostly environmentally based, so things like dry re forming of methane so reacting methane and CO2 to make synthesis gas that eventually if you put this into a polymer or synthesized longlife chemicals from it, you're taking CO2 out of the atmosphere. So there's a lot of that.

More broadly, at the University we have the Renew Institute which is led by Professor Goil. He's one of the faculty members in our Department, his.

Background and research. Before he came here was at Oak Ridge National Labs for many years, doing things related to superconductors and solar cells. He started a solar cell company.

There's lots of opportunities. Connect to that.

Yeah, I'm sure I'm thinking of a. There's a million other things that I'm not thinking of.

Somebody asked about research in water treatment.

At least.

At first glance, doctor Lin's group is the only one that I think has a big focus in water treatment a little bit more on the bio, so that's what the membrane separations for desalination. Other water purification.

Doctor Pfeiffer, I'm not sure what his plans are going forward, so, um, he had developed some molecules that.

Sort of naturally occuring bacteria that strongly bind particular metal ions, and so he's using those for some water water treatment kind of applications. That was one of the slides in the middle that had students have started companies. One of those was based on that technology.

Yeah, and there's probably other things that I'm not thinking of, but a lot of the.

A lot of the water research at UB is in our civil, structural, environmental, Engineering Research Department, so we have strong collaborations between our folks and people like Jon Atkin sending die.

Oh

Other guy whose name I'm not remembering.

Um?

Anyway, so yeah, I think it's it's probably not a problem, um.

Hum.

Another question about job prospects after completing the Ms degree. I mean, I think we're heading into an unknown world, right? We don't know what the world will look like 2 years from now, so you know my experience has been that you know the Ms students. Some of them go onto a PhD or some other degree program somewhere. I had a student from my group who went on to more of a engineering management getting a second Ms degree, but the students that go into the workforce get jobs. Some of them. It takes a long time so.

At a student have asked you graduated like.

Summer of 2019 that I think started a job at Tesla in February 2020, so he was looking for you at least six months after graduation. You know, obviously other students have a job lined up before they graduate, but it does. You know, we've been the last few years in an era of like nearly zero unemployment for engineers. So if you're persistent and you keep sending out resumes, you get a job eventually.

Yeah, whether that we don't know what that situation will be 2 years from now, but it will be.

And most of our students search nationally for jobs. I would say, you know there's some local students who have strong ties to the area that may really restrict their search to this part of the country. But I think most of our students look.

Nationwide, or even or even worldwide, but most of our students stay in the US after.

Oh, we explain track 1, two and three concept once again, so the numbers have no real significance. We just picked numbers right? So track one and track two are both research based Masters degrees.

You join a research group at the end of your first semester. You get up to speed in the group during the second semester. You typically are in the lab full time during the summer, and the following fall semester and the spring semester after that. If necessary, full two years and so you have basically a full year of devoting all your attention to your thesis research, which optimally results in a publication.

It varies a lot from group to group. Weather Ms students typically also, you know, typically get first author paper or whether they may not publish their work or their get middle author papers as part of a larger project or PhD students. But they do some original research.

And that is the difference between track one and track 2 is really just whether the slide says thesis to the committee, but after it goes to the committee it goes to the library and the Internet and it's published thesis that's there for all eternity, and so, um.

There's sort of a need for the advisor in the student to work together to really Polish it and make it a publication quality piece of work. Um, for track two, you still right up your research. You present it public defense with your advisor. At least one other faculty member. But then that report your advisor just signs off on.

And and you don't have to be sort of Polish it to, um, publication quality, because it's not going to go in the library. It's not going to go on the online database of all Masters. Thesis is in the US, so that's the real difference between those two and then track 3.

Is something is sort of a separate path that's you come in and you know that you don't as much want to focus on research. You may still.

He's going to research group and do some credits of work in the lab under individual problems, but you don't do a thesis or project or sort of independent research in that sense.

At least 20 four out of your 30 credits are regular formal courses.

And and the culminating experiences then this this final exam which is more or less a talk with Doctor Park, right about what you've learned and how it's come together and a portfolio of materials from your courses where you try to bring together how you know how this comes together to be more than just like a pile of individual homeworks, right? So we'd like you to think a little bit about that, but basically you're completing the courses and getting a degree much in the same way that you would as an undergraduate.

And then the Master of Engineering. The key difference is that the course requirements.

The course requirements are less specific for the Master of engineering, right? So all the Ms tracks have a certain number of like core hardcore chemical engineering courses that have to be taken at least one from a group of what we feel are like the most central core. Chemical engineering classes. Master of engineering. You can more or less put together the courses as all electives if that's what you want to do.

And so that really makes it more manageable for.

You know, students that don't have as much of a chemical engineering background maybe would like to avoid some of the more mathematically or programming demanding courses. Things like that me is still stem, right? It's still a degree in chemical engineering, so it's still very much stem. It's not both from the perspective of you know, qualifying for you know.

A stem based work authorization, but it's still it's chemical engineering. It's still, you know, quantitative technical. It's not humanities or social Sciences or something.

But it it's it's more flexible. Still all the courses are going to be an engineering for the most part.

Yeah.

Um?

Yeah, so the pathway. If you start as me and eventually want to end up in PhD.

It happens, uhm?

You know, I think I can think of at least one of my very very best PhD students came in as a master of engineering student, not because he didn't have the ability to do something more rigorous or whatever, but just that was what he thought he wanted to do when he came in. Turned out he really liked research, switched from me to MSN from Ms to PhD and.

Went off and is living a happy life as a corporate researcher now.

Marlo's answer to this one brings up important factor in the switch from Ms to PhD. It's not just you know that you need to be doing well, you know do well in courses, be doing well in your research. Your advisor needs to want to keep you as a PhD student, but you're also your advisor also has two.

Be able to fund you as a PhD student if you continue for the PhD, right? So if if in a particular year I have three graduate 3 Masters students graduating from my group and they all want to continue for the PhD, it would be unlikely that I'd have like 3 new PhD spots in my group and be able to fund all of them, right? So it's.

Uh.

The switch from Ms to PhD is not entirely under your control, but it is very much an option that happens a lot here as opposed to their some Department who try to keep their Ms program like very separate from the PhD and like don't accept anybody from their Ms program into their PhD.

So it's that's the key difference, right? We like to bring people from RMS into our PhD program, but we have to have the ability to do to do so financially, and so on.

Hum.

If anybody type to question that you feel we missed.

Right, they were going by really fast for awhile. Um, feel free to put it in there again.

Yes, very easy to find all of our contact info online. It was in the presentation slide that Sheldon just switched to.

Will all be happy to answer your questions here's a good one is the course more chemical engineering centric or biomedical engineering centric uhm?

But it depends what courses you take right? So we have a large enough faculty that, uh?

Uhm, you know we offer enough elective courses that there's going to be.

You, at the Masters level say you're doing an Ms. You're going to take one of those kinetics, thermodynamics or transport courses at least.

But then you could pick your electives so that pretty much all the rest are in the bio engineering direction, like you pretty much be taking all of the bio electives that are offered, right? So metabolic engineering, protein engineering, biochemical engineering, bio process modeling, tissue engineering, probably others I'm forgetting.

Yeah, so you could make it as bio focused as you want, even in the Ms track you can take a course or two outside the Department as well.

Assuming that relevant right? So you might take a course or two in the Biomedical Engineering Department, as long as it's not one that overlaps too much with ours.

But you know similarly, if your interests or materials or computation or other things you could avoid taking any bio engineering courses.

Just have to choose that path.

Um, can Ms either track one or track to be completed in 1.5 years? UM, in principle, yes. But in practice it is rare for a student to finish sort of a thesis scale project in that amount of time.

I mean, I once had one of our own undergraduates who did a thesis Ms like she had done undergrad research with Maine and she worked like.

The summer after her senior year, one academic year and then the next summer.

So in in like 15 months total, 2 summers in an academic year, she finished her thesis and went off. She wanted to go off to a PhD program somewhere else, which started in the fall and it worked great and she's a professor now, but um.

You know that's an exception. I would say most of our Ms students take 2 academic years plus the summer in between.

Uh, any management related electives? Uhm, yeah. So our industrial engineering Department has a whole online degree in engineering management. One piece of that that's been online for a long time is sort of the principles of Engineering Management. One and two courses. These are offered online, so sometimes students who want to pick it up quickly.

Um?

Will do one of those online courses in the winter term, which is like a three week term in.

January take a condensed version of that, or take it in the summer, right? It's very flexible.

Only two subjects, right? Yeah, typically, uhm.

At most you would take two courses from outside chemical engineering toward the Masters degree.

You know, like all rules, it can be bent.

Right, I mean it's it's our rule, so you know if you take something you take a.

Yeah, there may be courses in the environmental engineering part of civil engineering or in biomedical engineering that you come to Sheldon. Sheldon says, yeah, that's you know that could be in a chemical engineering Department. It's close enough, will count it as one of ours.

But in general it's a degree in chemical engineering so most of the classes should be in our Department.

Any petroleum related subject, so we do have one elective course in petroleum engineering.

It was taught in the fall this past year and I think it will be in the fall again in 2020. Uhm, and so that's the most obvious one that has petroleum in the name of the class.

You know the other core chemical engineering kinetics transport Thermo colloids and interfaces those courses are all quite relevant to petroleum engineering.

But just the one elective that is, you know, petroleum specific, I would say.

Ah, that's a good question. So uhm, yeah, so there is the chemical engineering. Uh, so the question is, do we have any student council committees like that of Aiche and advantages? They have the graduate student version of that is the.

Chemical engineering GSA which is just chemical engineering graduate student Association the nice thing about that is that they get a budget that somehow and eventually comes from tuition and fees right so student service fees that you all pay a little bit of that comes back to the graduate student Association and they you know they organize events.

Ted what else does the GSA do.

Sorry.

Are you putting me on the spot here they have they have a meet and greet in the beginning of the semester they introduce?

Letter in students to the new students I think there's a cookout that we do.

We have a bowling event which is really fun.

They organize after parties for hour after hour Department ilh symposium they go out for food and drinks afterwards so they organize all those sorts of things and.

They do a fantastic job it's a lot of fun they do a lot of good stuff for us.

And from the Department side there sort of who we go to when we want to ask the grad students about something right? And sort of for organizing things or.

Yeah.

Getting the grad student perspective.

Well said Doctor Park.

All right?

Last Call for questions. Thank you all for joining us for sticking around, uh, for an hour and a half. Uhm, hope will see you in the fall or if not the fall in the spring or whenever we couldn't see you in face to face.

And, uh.

The presentation, I think can be sent out if you want it, and um.

Jot down or find those email addresses in case you think of other questions later.

It was nice chatting with you all and.

Stay safe during these times and.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Right.

Yeah, thanks everyone. She ate your questions in your comments. They were all really thoughtful annum. Hopefully we can help you. Um, you know. So we can see you. Hopefully in the fall.

It's not in the spring.

Right.

Right.

Bye bye everybody.

Take care stay safe.