The Benjamin Levich Institute is an internationally recognized research center for the study of fundamental problems of flow and transport in complex fluid, fluid-like media and interface systems. Faculty members participating in the Institute are from Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Physics. With the Institute’s excellent laboratory and computational facilities, their current scope of research is in five major areas: granular flows, low Reynolds number hydrodynamics, non-Newtonian fluid mechanics, computational fluid mechanics, and transport along interfaces.

The Clean Fuels Institute, in the Department of Chemical Engineering, was founded in the 70’s by Professor Arthur Squires, and it played a prominent role in the development of coal conversion technology. It became dormant when interest in coal failed. The Institute has recently been revived to deal with the challenges of the energy crisis now facing the nation and the world. Reuel Shinnar, Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering, has been appointed Director of the Institute. He has been joined by Irven Rinard, chairman of the Department of Chemical Engineering, as Associate Director. The Institute will focus its attention on two of the most serious problems confronting us today: 1) Global Warming which is the result of CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions and 2) Energy Supply Shortages which will result from the fact that world oil supplies are going to peak within the next twenty to thirty years (if not sooner) and that the U.S. already imports natural gas.