Stanford
Chemical Engineering

HCP Master’s Program Requirements

The HCP MS program was designed with two goals in mind:

  1. To provide access to Stanford Chemical Engineering classes and faculty research-based insight to a wider audience
  2. To give Chemical Engineering master’s students the opportunity to combine Chemical Engineering studies with a wide range of engineering coursework offered by Stanford

To earn the degree, students complete 45 graduate academic units, distributed as follows:

Chemical Engineering | Take eight graduate level classes in Chemical Engineering, and one engineering seminar

Students take four of the following six available 300-level courses: (Not all courses are offered each year. Some courses are offered every other year. Quarter offered is subject to change)

  • CHEMENG 300: Applied Mathematics in the Chemical and Biological Sciences (Autumn)
  • CHEMENG 310: Microhydrodynamics (Winter)
  • CHEMENG 320: Chemical Kinetics and Reaction Engineering (Winter)
  • CHEMENG 340: Molecular Thermodynamics (Autumn)
  • CHEMENG 345: Fundamentals and Applications of Spectroscopy (Spring)
  • CHEMENG 355: Advanced Biochemical Engineering (Spring)

Students take additional four chemical engineering graduate-level lecture courses. (May not use CHEMENG699 or any CHEMENG500-level course.) The following courses apply and are offered online. (Not all courses are offered each year. Some courses are offered every other year. Quarter offered is subject to change)

  • May take additional core chemical engineering lecture course from the CHEMENG300 series
  • Four graduate electives in chemical engineering. Courses include but are not limited to the following:
    • CHEMENG 250: Biochemical Engineering (Winter)
    • CHEMENG 277: Data Science and Machine Learning Approaches in Chemical and Materials Engineering (not offered AY 23/24)
    • CHEMENG 283: Biochemistry II (Winter)
    • CHEMENG 289: Career Building: Entrepreneurship / Intrapreneurship, People, Innovation, Decision-Making and Impact (Winter)
    • CHEMENG 296: Creating New Ventures in Engineering and Science-based Industries (Spring)
    • CHEMENG 432: Electrochemical Energy Conversion (Autumn)
    • CHEMENG 443: Principles and practice of heterogeneous catalysis (Winter)
    • CHEMENG 450: Advances in Biotechnology (Spring)
    • CHEMENG 464: Polymer Chemistry (not offered AY 23/24)
    • CHEMENG 466: Polymer Physics (Spring)
    • CHEMENG 470: Mechanics of Soft Matter: Rheology (not offered online AY 23/24)

Engineering seminar: students take three additional units of CHEMENG699 Colloquium.  Students may also satisfy this requirement by taking three units of another seminar/speaker series in engineering, science, or math. For example:

  • MS&E472: Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders’ Seminar
  • MS&E494: The Energy Seminar
  • EE292E: Stanford Center for Image Systems Engineering (SCIEN) Seminar

Electives | An additional 18 units selected from graduate-level science, math or engineering lecture courses (3 units or more) in any appropriate department 

Of these 18 units, 6 must be graduate-level science, math or engineering lecture courses. The remaining 12 units can come from a combination of the following categories:

  • An additional 3-12 units of graduate-level science, math or engineering lecture courses
  • No more than 6 units of non-science, math or engineering courses; must be 100-level or higher.
  • No more than 3 units of seminar courses on science, math or engineering topics
    • Graduate-level science, math or engineering courses include, but are not limited to, courses from the following departments: AA, BIOE, BIO, CEE, CHEM, CME, CS, EE, MATH, MS&E, MATSCI, ME, PHYSICS, and STATS.

Topic Areas Sample

Students are encouraged to develop a concentration of 3-4 elective courses in one topical area and then use the other 2-3 elective courses to provide breadth to their program.

We have provided a sampling of topical areas and courses that one might take as part of this topical area concentration. This is not an exhaustive list; students are encouraged to follow their own interests and goals in selecting their elective courses.

Applied Mathematics, Modeling, and Numerical Analysis:

  • CME204: Partial Differential Equations in Engineering
  • CME206: Introduction to Numerical Methods for Engineering
  • EE261: The Fourier Transform and Its Applications
  • EE263: Introduction to Linear Dynamical Systems

Optimization and Control:

  • AA222/CS361: Engineering Design Optimization
  • EE263: Introduction to Linear Dynamical Systems
  • EE364A: Convex Optimization I
  • ENGR205: Introduction to Control Design Techniques
  • MS&E202: Optimal Control of Dynamic Systems
  • MS&E211: Introduction to Optimization
  • MS&E311: Optimization

Entrepreneurship in Science and Engineering:

  • MS&E271: Global Entrepreneurial Marketing
  • MS&E274: Dynamic Entrepreneurial Strategy
  • MS&E275: Foundations for Large-Scale Entrepreneurship
  • CEE246: Entrepreneurship in Civil & Environmental Engineering

Energy:

  • MATSCI256: Solar Cells, Fuel Cells, and Batteries: Materials for the Energy Solution
  • MATSCI302: Solar Cells
  • MS&E494: The Energy Seminar

Other potential areas of interest include Materials Science, Biomed, Computer Science.