Noah Malmstadt
Few people understand the culture of USC Viterbi‘s Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science better than Noah Malmstadt. He’s been part of the department for nearly two decades – and he believes it’s the faculty and student culture, as much as the global stakes of the research, that makes USC Mork an optimal environment for catalysis and change.
Now, in his new role as chair, Malmstadt is leading a department that combines three distinct fields: chemical engineering, materials science and petroleum engineering. That structure, he believes, has become increasingly relevant as questions of energy, manufacturing and the discovery of new materials are ever more intertwined.
Collaboration, as he sees it, is more important than consensus. What matters is that department decisions are informed by multiple perspectives and linked by shared priorities for engineering education.
We caught up with Malmstadt to hear his take on engineering pedagogy, the strong bonds that define the department’s culture, and how to strike a balance between making and machine learning.
