Making the Transition from Chemistry to Chemical Engineering
Danielle Lucey, MS’26, chemical engineering, wanted to make the switch from chemistry to chemical engineering to broaden her knowledge and career opportunities. Lucey is now applying all of the skills she has learned from the classroom and co-op to start her intensive thesis research on carbon dioxide hydrogenation.
Danielle Lucey began her academic journey at Northeastern University in the chemical engineering program without having a background in engineering. Lucey completed her undergraduate degree in chemistry and mathematical sciences and worked as a lab technician for a period after graduating. She saw a master’s degree in chemical engineering as a way to break into different areas of an industry she is enthusiastic about and forge a new career path.
Lucey liked that chemical engineering is a combination of math and chemistry, two subjects she was already skilled in. Seeing the vast opportunities chemical engineering has to offer in both a research and industrial setting, Lucey was sold on the idea to pursue a master’s degree.
Co-op Opportunities
Lucey is currently on co-op at Nalas Engineering, an engineering firm that helps other companies with research and development. Lucey’s role is an assistant process engineer, where she mainly collaborates with chemists and chemical engineers. In her role, she has been completing testing to collect evidence and data to inform decisions on the chemical synthesis process for different companies. The role has a lot of hands-on lab experience and requires learning new instruments to conduct the research.
Research and Thesis
When Lucey first applied to Northeastern, she noticed Professor and Associate Chair for Research for Chemical Engineering Richard West and his Computational Modeling in Chemical Engineering research group. This research immediately piqued Lucey’s interest due to a mathematical modeling class she enjoyed during her undergraduate degree. Additionally, the lab’s applications towards sustainability were a bonus for Lucey. In her first semester, she joined Professor West’s research and has been learning valuable information useful to her future career aspirations.
While on co-op at Nalas, Lucey continued to work with Professor West and will start her thesis at his lab. Lucey says Professor West has been supportive in helping her navigate the thesis process as she prepares to start her research.
Lucey’s thesis topic is on carbon dioxide hydrogenation, specifically looking at the process of carbon dioxide combining with hydrogen gas and seeing how valuable products can be made from that process. She said this process will be challenging to create and involves using a software called Reaction Mechanism Generator (RMG). This software can predict the types of reactions that will occur and create a detailed microkinetic model. After the microkinetic model is created, Lucey will simulate the reaction in a software called Cantera to understand what products will be formed.
Lucey, for her thesis, aims to replicate experimental results from Arthur W. Zafiropoulo Endowed Professor Hongfei Lin’s laboratory. In Professor Lin’s lab, his research team has successfully produced valuable products from carbon dioxide hydrogenation on a catalyst they have developed. However, Professor Lin and his team want to know more about the kinetic model that would describe their results. So, Lucey has done a grid search of different types of catalysts and will be working on an optimization to try to describe a catalyst.
Lucey says the most helpful thing during her research process has been the lab meetings. In these lab meetings, the researchers typically present the research and progress they have made. While she said it can sometimes feel hard to live up to the standards of the PhD students and their research projects, the feedback they give her has been vital and valuable to her experience and research.
Classroom Experience
Lucey contributes some courses she has completed during her time in the chemical engineering program to her success in her co-op and research. Since she did not complete an undergraduate degree in engineering, “Fundamentals of Chemical Engineering” covered a lot of the basics she needed to learn in order to succeed. Additionally, “Probability and Statistics for Engineers” and “Numerical Methods for Chemical Engineers” helped her connect her pre-existing knowledge of data and make it applicable to her engineering co-op.
Future Perspective
Lucey has been grateful for all of her professional opportunities so far in the chemical engineering program. She has felt that even though she did begin her academic career in engineering, everything she has learned in the classroom and through participating in co-op and research has prepared her for a future career in the engineering field. Before beginning this program, she wasn’t sure she would ever get to engage in these kinds of opportunities, especially her upcoming thesis project. She wants people who are considering pursuing a master’s degree in chemical engineering to know about all of the great opportunities that come along with it. She said to get involved in any research that interests you and “you can kind of be surprised at how much you will accomplish over, the short duration of the program.”