Chemical engineers draw on the chemical, physical and biological sciences to provide a systems approach to understand changes that take place in materials – from the molecular to the global scale. They also establish methods for required changes in composition, energy content, structure, or physical state. They often see engineering as a means towards useful outcomes. They can prioritise safety, loss prevention and environmental protection in their activities.
These activities may include:
- Converting raw materials into useful products: turning crude oil into petrol and plastics, turning milk into butter, cheese and powder, or processing biomaterials for body part replacements
- Altering chemical, biochemical or physical states to create value-added products, such as face creams, washing powder, processed foods, coatings, and more
- Managing, operating, and maintaining large-scale processes, such as drug manufacturing
These activities involve a sound knowledge of energy, raw materials, process chemistry and dynamics to achieve products, processes, and designs of the highest quality and efficiency. Our teaching philosophy also emphasises the shift from pollution prevention to clean technology.
Our Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering is home to a number of award-winning teaching staff, and affiliated with many of the University’s world-class research areas, groups, labs and experts, such as the Light Metals Research Centre and the Research Centre for Surface and Materials Science.

A Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) in Chemical and Materials Engineering introduces you to applied chemistry, materials characterisation, process engineering, energy, and mathematical modelling. This gives you the solid grounding necessary for a broad range of careers. The University of Auckland is also the only tertiary institution in New Zealand that offers an undergraduate specialisation with this unique combination of both Chemical and Materials Engineering.

Core topics include:
- Chemical engineering: the design, operations and process control for the value-added upgrading of raw material, with an aim to minimise environmental impact
- Materials engineering: an interdisciplinary field that explores the relationships between the structure, processing and properties of engineering materials
- Applied chemistry: the study of analytical, physical and organic chemistry, and biochemistry, including their instrumental techniques
- Materials characterisation: the fundamental sciences behind atomic structure and bonding, properties and testing, and the effects of corrosion, degradation and failure
- Process engineering: one of the most important unit operations in chemical industry, which covers safety, energy balances, and multiphase systems
- Energy: an essential topic that extends to the practical applications of thermodynamics, and theoretical concepts such as chemical potential, fugacity, vapour-liquid equilibria and reacting systems
- Food process engineering: the application of heat and mass transfer to the process and structuring of one of our essential industries

All our BE(Hons) specialisations are accredited by Engineering NZ, so your qualification will be recognised in many countries.