The Doctoral Training Program in Pharmaceutical Engineering at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey was established in 1995. It is one of a select group of such programs throughout the country funded by the National Science Foundation. It is located on the Busch Campus in Piscataway, NJ, where it is an integral part of the activities of the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, College of Pharmacy, Departments of Ceramics, Industrial Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering.

One of the greatest challenges of the pharmaceutical industry is to design and optimize manufacturing processes for the efficient and safe production of pharmaceutical products. To achieve this, a new type of professionals must be trained who are fluent in the language of basic chemical process engineering principles and are knowledgeable in the engineering science and unit operations of pharmaceutical manufacturing such as blending, crystallization, compaction, sampling and granulation. The program's purpose is to provide predoctoral students with integrated, interdisciplinary didactic and research training in pharmaceutical engineering. Students are trained to become professionals who are well-educated within a single discipline, and who also have the cross-disciplinary skills required to support the needs of the industrial and academic pharmaceutical sectors.

The research programs of the training faculty cover a broad spectrum of problems in pharmaceutical manufacturing. The majority of projects fall under the following research thrusts:

Blending: equipment design; size and shape segregation; time-of-mix studies; content uniformity; numerical modeling of powder flow.
Compaction: compactor simulator studies; material properties; modeling of compaction processes; tool design; tablet formulation; dissolution profiles.
Crystallization: thermodynamics of nucleation; growth kinetics; impact of mixing on particle size distribution; population balance modeling; on-line monitoring.
Granulation: melt granulation; high shear granulators.
Milling: ball mills; high shear mills.
Sampling: content uniformity; design of sampling schemes; infra-red
monitoring; image analysis of particulates.

The training program is in the heart of the largest concentration of
pharmaceutical industries in the country. Industrial partners participate
in the programs in the following ways:

Internships: Students spend at least one summer as an intern working in one of the partner's laboratories. This serves to familiarize the students with practical problems encountered by industry.

Dissertation Research: Industrial representatives will be invited to serve on doctoral dissertation committee. This serves to promote interactions between industrial faculty and students.

Seminars and Courses: Industrial investigators participate in seminar and courses. This allows the students to gain insights into the complexities involved in pharmaceutical technological development.

For additional information regarding this program go to:
Pharmaceutical Engineering and Particle Processing Homepage