In chemistry, standard subdivisions are analytical, biochemical, inorganic, organic, physical, and theoretical. The subdivisions in chemical engineering are: applied chemistry, kinetics and reaction engineering, process systems engineering, thermodynamics and chemical property estimation, and transport processes and separations. These subfield categories are primarily used for pedagogical clarity and organizational management in academia, but they are not typically used in industrial chemical research and development. However, the subfield limitations as artifacts and tools should be recognized—these categories are separated by boundaries that are neither essential nor rigid. This report has a central theme that creativity and progress often, perhaps even usually, occur across such boundaries. Thus as chemical science and technology move forward, it will be appropriate to examine whether the traditional disciplinary substructure continues to serve the chemical sciences well, or whether it is an impediment to progress. Chemistry, as a recognized discipline, is much older than the recognized field of chemical engineering with that name.¹ However, this does not reflect the true history of the two fields. Humankind has been doing useful things with chemistry for a very long time—going back to ancient Egypt and even to prehistoric times— and applied chemistry is the ancestor of the modern discipline of chemical engineering.

Chemists seek to relate the properties of all substances, both natural and man-made, to their detailed chemical composition, including the atomic arrangements of all the chemical components. Chemists want to do this not only for existing substances but also for new substances that do not yet exist. For instance medicinal chemists make new substances as potential cures for disease. Understanding how the properties of substances are related to their molecular structures helps chemists and chemical engineers design new molecules that have the desired properties, allows them to develop or invent new types of transformations for carrying out the syntheses, and assists them as they design ways to manufacture and process the new substances.

Chemistry is still one of the natural sciences, but in a special and unusual way. Chemists want to understand not only the substances and transformations that occur in the natural world, but also those others that are permitted by natural laws. Consequently, the field involves both discovery and creation. Chemists want to discover the components of the chemical universe—from atoms and molecules to organized chemical systems such as materials, devices, living cells, and whole organisms—and they also want to understand how these components interact and change as a function of time. However, chemical scientists consider not just the components of the chemical universe that already exist; they also con-