Nihal Tuğcu

(Kimya Mühendisliği 1997 mezunu), Merck Pharmaceuticals (Executive Director)
I currently lead a process development and engineering group at Merck, focusing on biological therapeutics. The chemical engineering degree along with the bio related electives that I have taken has provided me with a tremendous foundation to build upon. Chemical engineering brings together many essential subjects that are very much relevant to both synthetic (chemistry based) and biological drugs. Chemical engineers are in very high demand within the pharmaceutical industry simply due to the superior engineering skills they develop through a well-established curriculum. Over the last few years, in parallel with the developments in biological medicines/protein based therapeutics, chemical engineering curriculum has also evolved to include classes aiming to teach more biological concepts and polymer and protein-surface interactions based concepts to aid in device design. These are just a few examples to demonstrate how chemical engineering curriculum relates to pharma/biotech industry.