The mission of the program is to prepare students who wish to either pursue doctoral work in chemical or bioengineering or to obtain an advanced technical position in industry. The departmental faculty members have active research projects in the areas of biomaterials, biomechanics, biomedical imaging, computational thermodynamics, chemical reactor catalysis, electrochemistry, environmental engineering, paper physics and chemistry, solar cells, biomolecular engineering, drug delivery, and tissue engineering. Students are required to take a total of 34 credit hours comprising of 500 level course work (12 credit for thesis option and 18 for non-thesis option) and 12 credit hours of courses numbered 600 or above and a research-based thesis (thesis option) or a research paper (non-thesis option). For the thesis or the non-thesis research paper, students work with a faculty advisor on a research problem. Students in the combined BS/MS program can double count up to 6 and 9 credits for non-thesis and thesis options, respectively.