From Process to Systems Design: A Perspective on the Future of Design Education

Chemical engineers are natural �systems-thinkers�; this is a skill that allows us to analyze highly complex processes that involve heterogeneous components, phenomena, and scales. Systems-thinking skills are fostered in the chemical engineering curriculum via integrative and project-based courses, such as process/product design and laboratories. However, existing curricula tends to focus scope to product/process boundaries, offering limited opportunities to capture connections to behavior occurring at small scales (e.g., atomistic and molecular) and at large scales (e.g., supply chains, policy, markets, and infrastructures). This limit in scope can hinder our ability to appreciate how products/processes that we develop impact society, markets, and the environment (e.g., the opioid addiction crisis, environmental impacts of forever chemicals and chemical fertilizers, and electricity markets). This limit in scope can also hinder our ability to appreciate how emerging tools from the molecular sciences can help us design better products/processes. Expanding the boundaries of our thinking is essential in overcoming these limitations. In this perspective, I discuss how emerging concepts and technologies from machine learning, data science, environmental sciences, molecular simulations, and mathematics provide powerful tools to help foster systems-thinking over a broad set of scales and to help establish connections with non-traditional disciplines (e.g., social sciences). In addition, I discuss the need to create new conceptual frameworks, case studies, and software that can help foster systems-thinking.