The pace of change has increased dramatically across history. Where once a person carried out their trade all their lives with little change, today’s demands, technologies and challenges change rapidly. This means that school and university education must be constantly reviewed and updated, and that learning has to be a lifelong activity.

Why is quality education and lifelong learning important?

Ensuring that chemical engineers receive a quality education is a core function for IChemE. The institution upholds standards and sets a common approach by accrediting hundreds of higher education programmes around the world. It also offers professional registration and promotes training through accredited company training schemes and its own portfolio of courses.

IChemE supports chemical engineering education development through its academic journal, Education for Chemical Engineers, showcases latest advances in chemical engineering through its magazine, The Chemical Engineer (TCE) and its extensive portfolio of journals, and provides an active programme of technical webinars.

The Sustainability Hub provides training courses to upskill engineers, and the Knowledge Hub provides access to thousands of peer-reviewed resources. Research and innovation in chemical engineering aims to address some of the world’s most complex challenges including climate change, energy, food and water, bioeconomy, health and biotechnology, and industry digitalisation. Chemical engineering is evolving rapidly and new applications such as molecular modelling, quantum chemistry and synthetic biology are emerging. Chemical engineers bring a strong understanding of both systems and processes, thus contributing hugely to multidisciplinary research through a fresh perspective. IChemE has an important role to play as a link between researchers, funding bodies and industry to promote research and innovation in chemical engineering.

SDG alignment

As this is a fundamental area, delivery of which supports the other priority topics, it is not aligned with a specific SDG.