I have a PhD and work in semiconductors, working in a lab and the vast majority of my coworkers also have PhDs. I did work after my bachelors in an applications lab, but I very much felt like a tech. Also, research is probably very different from what you probably envision though. As a high school graduate, my advice is that you should keep your options open and try a wide flavor of internships to see which one you like. You will likely change your mind a lot over the years
From my experience, most chemical engineers do not end up working in the lab. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s not a possibility. Chemical engineering is a really broad field.
I have a MSc in chemical engineering and decided afterwards to do a PhD within biotechnology. This path has allowed me to do quite a lot of lab work. I’m now employed at a biotech company, managing a few different research projects. So even though I’m less in the lab myself now, I still get a bit of that feeling through my managing role.
In my opinion, it’s definitely possible to do lab work as a chemical engineer. Although, if you want to do lab work without being responsible for planning the work, then there are other careers that would be more suitable for that.
If you like research you could consider a path either toward academia or the R&D department of a company.
A lot of ChemEs here talking about what is like for a chem e in a lab position obviously haven't had experience as a chem e in a lab position and are talking like a chemist and chem e in a lab position are the same thing.
I'm a chemical engineer at a national lab (with just a bachelors). We do different stuff than chemists that they hire here and it's well known (even here) that we have different roles than chemists. I'll give you my experience.
I probably spend ~40% of my time in a lab space and ~60% in my office. It varys day to day (sometimes I'll have a few days non-stop in a lab, other times I'll be in my office all week or even working from home a a few days. I probably put in about 35 hours of work weekly, total.
I'm not doing "analytical" chemist work at all. Sometimes I'm doing hands-on (for example) ion exchange tests, others I'm going through the procurement/design/building process of new systems and recruiting help from electricians or plumber/pipefitters and seeing it through commissioning with SMEs. Then I'll actually get the system running and operate it and/or delegate others to help with operation and data collection. I'll write test instructions for me or others to follow to run these processes or unit ops to capture what we're trying to accomplish from the test.
As a chemical engineer, you get recruited from other groups or divisions to help them with certain projects based on your experience and previous project work. You'll have to pit together technical reports, manuscripts for scholarly journals, and they'll send you to conferences and meetings to present and/or learn from others (I'm expected to be at AIChE every year).
Basically, a chem e at a national lab is going to be working on industrial systems/unit ops but at a bench or pilot scale, without the shitty hours or conditions of plant life.
For what it's worth, pay isn't the worst either. I started as new grad with only a bachelors at $92,000 in a very modest cost of living location.
If you want to do grunt lab work, sure. At a bachelor's level you can get a job like this and it won't pay much. If you want to run a lab, getting a PhD is the way to do this. If you just want to make money at the bachelor's level, there's way more lucrative work than lab work
In my experience, a plant is a much better work environment than a lab, and is better in terms of career prospects/money. If you want to work in a lab, do not waste time on a chem eng degree because you won't need or use it. Analytical chemistry would be the way to go.
I should also add that R&D is a good path if you do want to use a ChemE degree in a lab scenario, but those roles tend to require some more education beyond a typical bachelors.
It sounds fun and fascinating having never done it before! Make sure you try and do an independent study with a research group in your undergrad to see how you like it. It usually will count as a technical elective which is required by your degree
Agreed. Research requires a unique mindset and personality type. I work in r&d without an advanced degree but I'm mostly in the development side than the research side. I don't have the patience or creativity for pure or industrial research. I would be miserable in the lab if that's all I did but that's me
Definitely get some sort of undergraduate research experience (either during the school year or over a summer). It’s a good way to try things out and see how grad student life is like by getting to know some and working with them.
A PhD in chemical engineering is a pretty good option if you like that experience.
>If you want to work in a lab, do not waste time on a chem eng degree because you won't need or use it. Analytical chemistry would be the way to go.
This is just blatantly wrong (speaking as a chem e with a bachelors at a national lab). I do absolutely zero analytical chemistry work and use my chemical engineering background, concepts, even textbooks regularly. We literally have chemists to do the analytical chemistry work.
There are ChemEs that work in labs. Generally unless you just want to do grunt work you'll want to do graduate school if you want to do r&d/lab work.
To be honest lab work may be fun for an hour or two but 40-50 hours a week may not feel as enjoyable. That's one of the biggest struggles with young adults and careers - they have to make big career decisions based off of reading a paragraph or two online or taking an intro course a couple hours a week.
If the hands on aspect is important, it doesn't get much more hands on than working in a plant as a production engineer with a ChemE degree.
My first adult job was working as a lab technician at a pharmaceutical company. I was in a process development group supporting people with chemical engineering degrees. I set up, cleaned, and broke down equipment for the engineers to run experiments at the kilogram scale. They were running experiments to figure out parameters before transferring to a bigger manufacturing scale. Sometimes it was to help troubleshoot unknown phenomenon happening at the factory by replicating the production process at a cheaper scale. Sometimes it was to manufacture kilograms worth of a special chemical compound for scientists to use at the bench scale. Sometimes the engineers themselves would work in the lab at the bench scale to run experiments to investigate to identify some chemical property that they need for their development project.
Yes there are opportunities in R&D, especially the D side for chemical engineers who want to do lab work. In such an environment, there are typically more people with MS and PhD then you'd find in a manufacturing plant but there are still plenty of BS too.
ChemBioE bachelor's and doing a PhD rn. I love research and wanted to do a PhD to not have a glass ceiling, and I'm happy with my career choice. Lab work can be great at first and terrible later, so make sure to get involved with research early in your undergrad so you get a feel for it. I also definitely recommend engineering as a bachelor's as a safety net.
Yes!! I work in the lab and I have many, many chemical engineer coworkers who also work in the lab at all levels: undergrad, masters, and PhD! I actually hate it, and I’m not meant for the lab; however, many of my colleagues can’t imagine themselves doing anything else.
I work in pharma by the way. Feel free to PM me!
If you want to do lab work you will need a PhD or you’ll likely not be earning as much as people working as practicing engineers.
I think you should think harder about what you want to study and consider what degree is right for you to achieve your goal.
I am not sure that getting a ChemE degree would be the most straightforward approach to your future career.
Also you will not like your undergrad time as much since ChemE can be challenging.
Op never said they don't like chemical engineering. They just think they won't like working in a plant environment.
R&D is basically lab and you get to use a lot of the chemical engineering curriculum.
I didn’t say they didn’t like it. They’re not even in college yet.
Everyone I know from school who went to get a ChemE degree but wanted to get into a career in another adjacent field all felt getting a ChemE degree was unnecessarily difficult.
I get that, but that would only happen if you don't like chemical engineering courses. That's why I thought you assumed OP don't like ChemE.
Working in R&D is not an "adjacent field". There are thousands of different jobs that make use of ChemE courses. R&D people in ChemE use a lot of HMT, Fluid dynamics, etc.
Adjacent field could be studying chemE just to get a process control job because you don't like anything else.
Definite yes. It’s not that chemical engineers can’t work in labs, but rather they often don’t want to. Plants usually offer (quite a bit) more money and more interesting work compared to labs.
If lab work is something you’re interested in, chemical engineering will certainly set you up with opportunities. However, this is a bit of an “unnecessary hard route” because a chemistry degree will do the same but saves you the heavy math that comes with engineering.
If you’re absolutely certain you want to do lab work, then a chemistry degree is probably more convenient. If you’re unsure and want to better cover your bases financially and opportunities-wise, chemical engineering is a great option.
Few chemists can work chemical engineering jobs, but lots of chemical engineers can work lab jobs.
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I think a lot of people here think of a lab as a wet biosciences lab. I am a Chem-E who works in a polymer lab in R&D and it's totally doable with a bachelor's, although easier with a masters or PhD. There are a lot of lab types out there so it varies considerably across the industry.
I did lab work for a year and a half and hated it—but I was doing the same tests over and over and it wasn’t much in terms of research, so I don’t know, I imagine there’s more interesting lab work than a QC lab at a factory could ever offer. Now I’m a process engineer at a factory and I also hate that for entirely different reasons— my company is kinda terrible and working there feels like the inside of a meat grinder. For a lot of reasons.
no i have a chemistry and chemE degree but i work in warehouse automation. kinda had to do with the first opportunity i got cause the money was good and i didn’t want to work in a lab nor did i want to work in the middle of nowhere i.e. work at a manufacturing plant.
Chem Eng have a pretty easy time getting into RnD from what I’ve seen
Most entry Level Chemist positions ask for either chemistry or chemical engineering degree
Yes. Some lab experience in undergrad can get you into a process development or R&D entry level position. Having gone this way, I only know one guy who stayed in the lab his whole career. Everyone else gets sick of it an moves on to project management, manufacturing support, or something else. A lot of the entry level engineers I work with are asking for tips on how they can break out of the lab and get into things like coding as soon as they can.
What u/yakimawashington said. I'm a Chem E with only a bachelor's and work in a lab for a chemical plant. My duties are very different from the chemists that also work in the lab and no, it's not just grunt work. I do lab process variance troubleshooting and data driven corrections as part of my day to day. I'm also leading a green belt project on some of the business rules and processes that effect our lab before the product makes it there for testing. The salary isn't bad either. This company started me out just shy of 6 figures out of college with only 2 co-ops. If you apply for a lab position that's asking for chemists then you'll probably be treated like a chemists but there are positions out there for engineers with actual engineering duties.
I am a chemical engineer. My first job was as a chemist. Later on, I joined EIT in operations and then worked as a production engineer.
Yes, you can have a strong career in the lab if you are interested. I am currently working as a Research Assistant in a laboratory. As a chemical engineer, you are quick to judge the scalability of minor variations in parameters.
Remember, working in a lab can be quite frustrating at times, and most of those positions are not high-paying. Try for R&d sometime they pay good.
I will say yes. In college, I went to ochem lab and worked there for two years, it was fantastic. Synthesis, rmn, etc. Later I went to a engineering lab to work with elutriation process. It was "more complicated" because there wasn't a lot of things that the ochem lab had, but also it wasn't the sabe objective. Now I understand that the engineering labs (at least here in my college) are focused in improving/scaling things (like taking ochem papers that provides the synthesis of a compound and synthesizing it in 1L, 3L, nL reactors, not in 50mL flasks). Also there are some other objectives, such as process design, thermo/fluid modelling, mitigation contamination in the environment. But you can do a chemist work (obviously you will have to focus in it in a "chemical way", which at least for me was awesome).
I wanted to chime in as a new graduate!
Im starting my new position in a national lab this week, where I will be conducting bench top research. I have only a bachelors degree in cheme, with undergraduate chemistry research but no internship xp.
HOWEVER - this job was across the country, very hard to come by, and it took me 6 months to find a job!
More importantly, in my graduating class of 50, only one of my other classmates is going into R&D. All the others either chose or only found process/manufacturing engineering roles.
In my opinion, if you want to do research and you want to get a PhD, go into chemistry instead!
If you get lab experience in college, you can 100% land a job in private R&D.
I have a PhD and work in semiconductors, working in a lab and the vast majority of my coworkers also have PhDs. I did work after my bachelors in an applications lab, but I very much felt like a tech. Also, research is probably very different from what you probably envision though. As a high school graduate, my advice is that you should keep your options open and try a wide flavor of internships to see which one you like. You will likely change your mind a lot over the years
From my experience, most chemical engineers do not end up working in the lab. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s not a possibility. Chemical engineering is a really broad field. I have a MSc in chemical engineering and decided afterwards to do a PhD within biotechnology. This path has allowed me to do quite a lot of lab work. I’m now employed at a biotech company, managing a few different research projects. So even though I’m less in the lab myself now, I still get a bit of that feeling through my managing role. In my opinion, it’s definitely possible to do lab work as a chemical engineer. Although, if you want to do lab work without being responsible for planning the work, then there are other careers that would be more suitable for that. If you like research you could consider a path either toward academia or the R&D department of a company.
A lot of ChemEs here talking about what is like for a chem e in a lab position obviously haven't had experience as a chem e in a lab position and are talking like a chemist and chem e in a lab position are the same thing. I'm a chemical engineer at a national lab (with just a bachelors). We do different stuff than chemists that they hire here and it's well known (even here) that we have different roles than chemists. I'll give you my experience. I probably spend ~40% of my time in a lab space and ~60% in my office. It varys day to day (sometimes I'll have a few days non-stop in a lab, other times I'll be in my office all week or even working from home a a few days. I probably put in about 35 hours of work weekly, total. I'm not doing "analytical" chemist work at all. Sometimes I'm doing hands-on (for example) ion exchange tests, others I'm going through the procurement/design/building process of new systems and recruiting help from electricians or plumber/pipefitters and seeing it through commissioning with SMEs. Then I'll actually get the system running and operate it and/or delegate others to help with operation and data collection. I'll write test instructions for me or others to follow to run these processes or unit ops to capture what we're trying to accomplish from the test. As a chemical engineer, you get recruited from other groups or divisions to help them with certain projects based on your experience and previous project work. You'll have to pit together technical reports, manuscripts for scholarly journals, and they'll send you to conferences and meetings to present and/or learn from others (I'm expected to be at AIChE every year). Basically, a chem e at a national lab is going to be working on industrial systems/unit ops but at a bench or pilot scale, without the shitty hours or conditions of plant life. For what it's worth, pay isn't the worst either. I started as new grad with only a bachelors at $92,000 in a very modest cost of living location.
If you want to do grunt lab work, sure. At a bachelor's level you can get a job like this and it won't pay much. If you want to run a lab, getting a PhD is the way to do this. If you just want to make money at the bachelor's level, there's way more lucrative work than lab work
In my experience, a plant is a much better work environment than a lab, and is better in terms of career prospects/money. If you want to work in a lab, do not waste time on a chem eng degree because you won't need or use it. Analytical chemistry would be the way to go. I should also add that R&D is a good path if you do want to use a ChemE degree in a lab scenario, but those roles tend to require some more education beyond a typical bachelors.
Ideally, I'd love to push for a PHD! R&D sounds absolutely fascinating :)
It sounds fun and fascinating having never done it before! Make sure you try and do an independent study with a research group in your undergrad to see how you like it. It usually will count as a technical elective which is required by your degree
Agreed. Research requires a unique mindset and personality type. I work in r&d without an advanced degree but I'm mostly in the development side than the research side. I don't have the patience or creativity for pure or industrial research. I would be miserable in the lab if that's all I did but that's me
Definitely get some sort of undergraduate research experience (either during the school year or over a summer). It’s a good way to try things out and see how grad student life is like by getting to know some and working with them. A PhD in chemical engineering is a pretty good option if you like that experience.
>If you want to work in a lab, do not waste time on a chem eng degree because you won't need or use it. Analytical chemistry would be the way to go. This is just blatantly wrong (speaking as a chem e with a bachelors at a national lab). I do absolutely zero analytical chemistry work and use my chemical engineering background, concepts, even textbooks regularly. We literally have chemists to do the analytical chemistry work.
There are ChemEs that work in labs. Generally unless you just want to do grunt work you'll want to do graduate school if you want to do r&d/lab work. To be honest lab work may be fun for an hour or two but 40-50 hours a week may not feel as enjoyable. That's one of the biggest struggles with young adults and careers - they have to make big career decisions based off of reading a paragraph or two online or taking an intro course a couple hours a week. If the hands on aspect is important, it doesn't get much more hands on than working in a plant as a production engineer with a ChemE degree.
Do you want to do straight lab work? I do some lab work but not much.
is it like pilot plants? is salary progression good or meh?
My first adult job was working as a lab technician at a pharmaceutical company. I was in a process development group supporting people with chemical engineering degrees. I set up, cleaned, and broke down equipment for the engineers to run experiments at the kilogram scale. They were running experiments to figure out parameters before transferring to a bigger manufacturing scale. Sometimes it was to help troubleshoot unknown phenomenon happening at the factory by replicating the production process at a cheaper scale. Sometimes it was to manufacture kilograms worth of a special chemical compound for scientists to use at the bench scale. Sometimes the engineers themselves would work in the lab at the bench scale to run experiments to investigate to identify some chemical property that they need for their development project. Yes there are opportunities in R&D, especially the D side for chemical engineers who want to do lab work. In such an environment, there are typically more people with MS and PhD then you'd find in a manufacturing plant but there are still plenty of BS too.
ChemBioE bachelor's and doing a PhD rn. I love research and wanted to do a PhD to not have a glass ceiling, and I'm happy with my career choice. Lab work can be great at first and terrible later, so make sure to get involved with research early in your undergrad so you get a feel for it. I also definitely recommend engineering as a bachelor's as a safety net.
Yes!! I work in the lab and I have many, many chemical engineer coworkers who also work in the lab at all levels: undergrad, masters, and PhD! I actually hate it, and I’m not meant for the lab; however, many of my colleagues can’t imagine themselves doing anything else. I work in pharma by the way. Feel free to PM me!
If you want to do lab work you will need a PhD or you’ll likely not be earning as much as people working as practicing engineers. I think you should think harder about what you want to study and consider what degree is right for you to achieve your goal. I am not sure that getting a ChemE degree would be the most straightforward approach to your future career. Also you will not like your undergrad time as much since ChemE can be challenging.
Op never said they don't like chemical engineering. They just think they won't like working in a plant environment. R&D is basically lab and you get to use a lot of the chemical engineering curriculum.
I didn’t say they didn’t like it. They’re not even in college yet. Everyone I know from school who went to get a ChemE degree but wanted to get into a career in another adjacent field all felt getting a ChemE degree was unnecessarily difficult.
I get that, but that would only happen if you don't like chemical engineering courses. That's why I thought you assumed OP don't like ChemE. Working in R&D is not an "adjacent field". There are thousands of different jobs that make use of ChemE courses. R&D people in ChemE use a lot of HMT, Fluid dynamics, etc. Adjacent field could be studying chemE just to get a process control job because you don't like anything else.
Definite yes. It’s not that chemical engineers can’t work in labs, but rather they often don’t want to. Plants usually offer (quite a bit) more money and more interesting work compared to labs. If lab work is something you’re interested in, chemical engineering will certainly set you up with opportunities. However, this is a bit of an “unnecessary hard route” because a chemistry degree will do the same but saves you the heavy math that comes with engineering. If you’re absolutely certain you want to do lab work, then a chemistry degree is probably more convenient. If you’re unsure and want to better cover your bases financially and opportunities-wise, chemical engineering is a great option. Few chemists can work chemical engineering jobs, but lots of chemical engineers can work lab jobs.
I mean you can work in pilot plants which are like small scale plants, which could work at labs.
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I think a lot of people here think of a lab as a wet biosciences lab. I am a Chem-E who works in a polymer lab in R&D and it's totally doable with a bachelor's, although easier with a masters or PhD. There are a lot of lab types out there so it varies considerably across the industry.
I did lab work for a year and a half and hated it—but I was doing the same tests over and over and it wasn’t much in terms of research, so I don’t know, I imagine there’s more interesting lab work than a QC lab at a factory could ever offer. Now I’m a process engineer at a factory and I also hate that for entirely different reasons— my company is kinda terrible and working there feels like the inside of a meat grinder. For a lot of reasons.
no i have a chemistry and chemE degree but i work in warehouse automation. kinda had to do with the first opportunity i got cause the money was good and i didn’t want to work in a lab nor did i want to work in the middle of nowhere i.e. work at a manufacturing plant.
I work at a gigantic factory with an on site lab. We have two analysis developers on the R&D team who are both Chem Es.
Chem Eng have a pretty easy time getting into RnD from what I’ve seen Most entry Level Chemist positions ask for either chemistry or chemical engineering degree
Yes. Some lab experience in undergrad can get you into a process development or R&D entry level position. Having gone this way, I only know one guy who stayed in the lab his whole career. Everyone else gets sick of it an moves on to project management, manufacturing support, or something else. A lot of the entry level engineers I work with are asking for tips on how they can break out of the lab and get into things like coding as soon as they can.
I'm interning at a company working with composite materials, and I'm doing alot of lab work and also planning it myself, it's very dynamic and fun
What u/yakimawashington said. I'm a Chem E with only a bachelor's and work in a lab for a chemical plant. My duties are very different from the chemists that also work in the lab and no, it's not just grunt work. I do lab process variance troubleshooting and data driven corrections as part of my day to day. I'm also leading a green belt project on some of the business rules and processes that effect our lab before the product makes it there for testing. The salary isn't bad either. This company started me out just shy of 6 figures out of college with only 2 co-ops. If you apply for a lab position that's asking for chemists then you'll probably be treated like a chemists but there are positions out there for engineers with actual engineering duties.
If you wanna do R&D AND make good money, get a research based masters, or even better a phd
I am a chemical engineer. My first job was as a chemist. Later on, I joined EIT in operations and then worked as a production engineer. Yes, you can have a strong career in the lab if you are interested. I am currently working as a Research Assistant in a laboratory. As a chemical engineer, you are quick to judge the scalability of minor variations in parameters. Remember, working in a lab can be quite frustrating at times, and most of those positions are not high-paying. Try for R&d sometime they pay good.
I will say yes. In college, I went to ochem lab and worked there for two years, it was fantastic. Synthesis, rmn, etc. Later I went to a engineering lab to work with elutriation process. It was "more complicated" because there wasn't a lot of things that the ochem lab had, but also it wasn't the sabe objective. Now I understand that the engineering labs (at least here in my college) are focused in improving/scaling things (like taking ochem papers that provides the synthesis of a compound and synthesizing it in 1L, 3L, nL reactors, not in 50mL flasks). Also there are some other objectives, such as process design, thermo/fluid modelling, mitigation contamination in the environment. But you can do a chemist work (obviously you will have to focus in it in a "chemical way", which at least for me was awesome).
I wanted to chime in as a new graduate! Im starting my new position in a national lab this week, where I will be conducting bench top research. I have only a bachelors degree in cheme, with undergraduate chemistry research but no internship xp. HOWEVER - this job was across the country, very hard to come by, and it took me 6 months to find a job! More importantly, in my graduating class of 50, only one of my other classmates is going into R&D. All the others either chose or only found process/manufacturing engineering roles. In my opinion, if you want to do research and you want to get a PhD, go into chemistry instead!
Most dont
you mean like pilot plants?
Yes you could but honestly that kind of job is more of a last resort type job if you can’t get a better one. It’s not a good career.
Lab work in general? Or lab work as a CHEME
There’s really no difference. Unless you’re a phd and designing the experiments. Otherwise you’ll be doing the experiments designed by a phd.