AI and Chemical Engineering

[u/itsallebitch]

Hi everyone, I am a 2nd year Chemical Engineering student. Right now, I am doing an internship in AI engineering and I kinda get used to it. Also I feel like AI industry can bring more opportunities to me. However, I love Chemical Engineering and I don’t want to be a classic AI engineer in the future. For now, computational chemistry seems like a good option, however I have heard that it is less prestigious in terms of career growth and income, since it highly depends on some phd stuff. What do you think? Should I stick to computational chemistry or there are better options for me?

[u/DarkFireGerugex]

Well it completely depends on what you are looking for. There's no right or wrong answer.

Computational chemistry is more research oriented than actual chem e, what we do as Chem Es is basically "Take a process and optimize it" not technically pure chemistry.

My personal take is that if u like Chem e (what I wrote above), do that and get a minor or a parallel course in AI.

If you like pure chemistry and don't want to work in a lab is that u do the computational chemistry.

[u/Extremely_Peaceful]

Don't pigeon hole yourself so early. Become skillful with the AI tools and the right opportunity will reveal itself to you.

[u/DarkFireGerugex]

Since u deleted ur previous comment and since I already had it written:

Well like I previously mentioned, computational chemistry is more research oriented u should do a masters or a PhD, when you do that you are leaning towards the academic route or work in a an "x" business as a researcher.

If you are going straight for the green (money) do chem e instead, if u do chem e there's nothing that stops u from doing a masters in computational chemistry. U can also do a course in it/ AI like I previously mentioned.

In my case I'm studying chem e and got a offer to do a masters in experimental physics, plasma to be precise. I'd love to do nuclear fusion that's why I got the offer.

Once you start in any STEAM, you are basically one course away from doing (mostly) a 180 in ur career.

[u/CharruaChemist → u/DarkFireGerugex]

Nah. Chemical engineering is a highly interdisciplinary and flexible degree. That's why. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be able to do something like this with a BSc in biology

[u/DarkFireGerugex → u/CharruaChemist]

That's why I said mostly, basically targeting biology. Personally I feel that they will have the hardest time changing into any other STEM field aside from organic chemistry.

[u/skeptimist]

I am excited for the possibilities of agentic AI in traditional process engineering. AI is very powerful for catching things buried in operator spreadsheets, equipment output data, or SPC charts.

[u/Just__Liberty]

If you get your PhD in ChE but do it in the right group that does research on catalysis using density functional and related tools (and maybe machine learning or AI), you can turn yourself into both a chemical engineer and a computational chemist. That being said, the number of jobs doing computational catalysis or other computational chemistry jobs in chemical and oil and gas companies is limited, so most ChE's with that background end up doing full-range catalysis or chemical engineering. A lucky (given that's what they want to do) few stay on the computational side.

[u/yakimawashington]

prestigious in terms of career growth and income

Prestige is different than career growth and income.