Welcome from the Head of Department

The University of Auckland is New Zealand's highest-ranked university and is ranked as one of the world's top 100 universities according to the QS Rankings. Our faculty has similarly established its position as New Zealand's top Engineering faculty, and we're also the highest ranked Chemical Engineering department in the country.

The Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering has 22 academic staff members, including three fellows of the Royal Society of New Zealand, several members with charted engineer status or elected fellowships to professional societies, and a successful series of university early-career research excellence award recipients.

With a current annual intake of 85 students into our undergraduate programme, our numbers have grown steadily by about 25% over the last ten years. The BE(Hons) in Chemical and Materials Engineering is accredited not only by Engineering New Zealand, but also by the United Kingdom based International Institute of Chemical Engineers (IChemE), and to the level of the UK Master of Engineering standard. Internationally, our undergraduate programme is unique and innovative – besides its strong process-engineering core, it is purposefully integrated with a well-defined materials engineering curriculum.

Our graduates, with their materials engineering training, find employment in a wide range of industries. They are not restricted to just traditional chemical engineering areas such as oil and gas, mining and minerals, and food processing, but also in heavy and light metals manufacturing, plastics, polymers and other materials engineering sectors, to name but a few.

Our department’s research is internationally recognised, with strengths in light metals, process control, food engineering, membrane technology, wastewater treatment, biomass refinery, thermal storage systems, biological materials, and surface materials science. Our world-class laboratories and facilities will by 2020 be shifted to a brand new, purpose-built engineering building in the heart of Auckland city, where we will continue to expect new opportunities for further growth and development for our research and teaching activities.

Associate Professor Ashvin Thambyah
Head of Department