Department of Chemical Engineering

I'm Professor Mehmet Bilgin. I am the Head of Istanbul University - Cerrahpaşa, Faculty of Engineering, Chemical Engineering Department. I also work as the dean of the Faculty of Engineering. The Chemical Engineering Department is Turkey's first program in the field of chemical engineering that granted a diploma. First of all, let me briefly talk about the Chemical Engineering Department. The Department of Chemical Engineering educates engineers who design and operate processes that transform chemicals and raw materials into usable forms for humanity. In this sense, our graduates have the opportunity to find jobs easily. In our department there are approximately 50 academics, them being faculty members and research assistants. Our department consists of 3 main disciplines: Basic Operations and Thermodynamics, Chemical Technologies, and Process and Reactor Design. In addition to basic engineering courses such as Physics, Mathematics, Chemistry, Technical Drawing, and foreign languages, students in the first two years also take an introduction to chemical engineering course. This course provides a definition of the profession as they take their first steps learning about it. Compulsory and elective courses are offered starting from the third grade. Our compulsory courses are again indispensable in the Chemical Engineering Department. Besides convection phenomena such as heat transfer, fluid mechanics, mass transfer, it includes courses such as Polymer, Process Design, Catalysts. In addition to these compulsory courses, students can choose courses according to their interests. We also have group courses such as Plastic, Medicine and Paint. Of course, the fourth grade is the year when they gradually step into the profession. More specific lessons are available this year. The graduation project is also meant to be completed in this period. We have a group of courses that include water treatment and environment-related courses, and finally, applied entrepreneurship courses. In addition to the engineering courses they have taken during their first 2 years of education, our students also take intensive chemistry courses specific to their departments. We have separate laboratories such as Inorganic Chemistry and Organic Chemistry Laboratories which belong to the department. We also have a physics laboratory and all necessary equipment. Of course, our students also attend classes in a separate laboratory specific to each course in the vocational courses they have taken in the third and fourth grades. They prepare themselves for the sector by reinforcing the theoretical and practical knowledge they gained from the courses and the internship programs.
Let me give information about the internship programs and graduation requirements of our students. They are required to take the graduation project course in the last year. With that, they need to calculate the parameters, design and operate a chemical process, a chemical facility, by doing a group work involving three to four people, accompanied by an advisor. Our department has a mandatory 15-day laboratory and 30-day management internship. Our students have the opportunity to fulfil these obligations comfortably in Istanbul. In addition to these, our students can also develop their skills by taking part in joint projects in Teknokent, which is located in the Avcılar Campus, according to their interests. Our Chemical Engineering Department has agreements with many countries as part of the Erasmus and Mevlana programs. If a student achieves a certain level of success, a bilateral agreement can be made with another country if they find a school in addition to the existing agreements we’ve made. Thus, we can send them for a term or a certain period of time for internship or training purposes. Likewise, we have students coming to us from abroad. There are club activities that our students participate intensively within the faculty. While these club activities may be held together with the clubs of other universities from time to time, we also had a student congress that we organized as the Chemical Engineering Department in the past. Although making such a demand is entirely up to our students, we, as the Department of Chemical Engineering, support our students. Chemical engineers are highly sought-after engineers in the industry. Every object we hold with our hands and see with our eyes is a chemical engineering product. The paint industry, rubber, plastic industry, the production of all kinds of materials starting from metal alloys, the production of different chemicals and drugs are always among the interests of chemical engineers. Wherever there are phytochemicals, production processes, and where operating parameters are calculated, chemical engineers have the opportunity to find jobs. In our department, it would not be right for us to make a classification based on the difficulty or ease among courses. All of our lessons are important in their own right and our faculty members always support our students along with the remaining staff and infrastructure. Our students are much more successful when they choose elective courses according to their interests. As long as humanity exists, the chemical engineering profession will exist and is an attractive profession. Therefore, they always have the opportunity to cooperate with professions in different disciplines. Since the fields of study are very wide, we welcome our students to our department. My advice to our friends who want to choose our department is this. If they like chemistry and engineering, they should definitely choose this department. They will have a profession that they can enjoy throughout their lives, and they will never be unemployed. Istanbul University-Cerrahpaşa is a university which hosts important faculties such as the Faculty of Engineering, Faculty of Forestry, Florence Nightingale Nursing Faculty, Hasan Ali Yücel Faculty of Education, Faculty of Health Sciences and Faculty of Veterinary in addition to Cerrahpaşa Faculty of Medicine. It is a university with campuses in different parts of Istanbul. Therefore, our candidates who choose us will benefit from the all the different benefits of the library, sports and other faculties in different campuses of our university. Especially Avcılar Campus, where our Engineering Faculty is located, is a very beautiful campus in terms of sports, social and cultural activities. We would like to see all our students in Avcilar. I wish success to all my friends who will join us.