So my name is Gerri Botte and I’m a professor in the Russ college of engineering and technology and also the director for the center for electrochemical engineering research and I’m also the founder of a company E3 Clean Technologies. Well E3 Clean Technologies is a company that is dedicated to provide air quality and water quality and clean energy. Our focus right now is waste water remediation. We are basically collecting waste water that contains ammonia or urea and removing those pollutants from water and cogenerating energy in the form of hydrogen. We all flush the bathroom and send the problem to somebody else but it turns out there is a lot of energy consumption in order to clean water so what I thought was what if instead of taking clean water to make hydrogen. I can take dirty water to make hydrogen and then what run into my mind is what if I can use urine pee and ammonia and interact then that’s what started everything so it’s a classic example of what a chemical engineer does. I conceived that idea right and then the next day I was in the laboratory trying to see how that concept will work and then I got excited when I was able to take a waste that contains ammonia NH3 break down the ammonia into nitrogen going back into the air and cogenerating hydrogen and then you could use the hydrogen to produce to electricity. We are able to conceive a process all the way from the piece of paper or when you are driving in the car and get an idea and then from there you go into the lab and do some experiments and then you scale up that process and then you are able to actually see a transformation into basically a chemical transformation into a process. So there’s basically a distinction. We basically conceive and decide processes all the way from an idea all the way to the large scale. I think to get ready for a chemical engineering degree one of the first things you will need to like chemistry a lot and that’s something that is very common for someone who is going into a chemistry major or into a chemical engineer the difference is, in addition to liking chemistry you also have to like math. I basically recommend the students to get engaged into doing some research lab we have a lot of opportunities for undergrad students to participate in that. The advantage is, it’s not research where you are just running a machine in a lab it’s basically starting to see how you can design a process from scratch it’s that practical experience that you will not learn just by sitting in class. So the advice that I would give to somebody that wants to go into chemical engineering is to be persistent. To continue living that passion of liking the chemistry the math and the physics. If you are persistent and you have a passion for what you do basically that’s good advice for no matter what you do in life but it’s classical in a chemical engineer. You have to be very passionate and persistent and very organized as well. So it’s a career that’s exciting, your day will be different every day. So you kind of have to get used to living life that way. So it is important to always keep the passion that will keep you on the path you choose