Becoming a bioprocess engineer requires a bachelor’s degree in engineering or life sciences, with further education and experience depending on the specific subdivision. After acquiring the necessary degree, passing the FE and PE exams and working under a professional engineer are required to become licensed.
Becoming a bioprocess engineer requires a combination of education and job skills. Acquiring a license in bioprocess engineering also requires testing and documentation. The types of education and experience followed by a person who wants to become a bioprocess engineer will depend on the subdivision of bioprocess engineering that person would like to work in.
Any career in bioprocess engineering will require at least a bachelor’s degree, likely in some form of engineering. Chemical engineering and agricultural engineering departments may offer bioprocess engineering courses. Degrees in biochemistry or other life sciences are also possible avenues if you want to become a bioprocess engineer. Certain career paths in bioprocess engineering may also require a master’s or doctoral degree.
Which department a person chooses to major in will likely partially depend on the field they want to work in. Bioprocess engineering encompasses biofuel production, food processing, various fermentation processes, and pharmaceutical production. Food processing engineering is often included in agricultural engineering departments, while biofuels and fermentation processes courses are found in agricultural and chemical engineering departments. If a person wants to pursue employment in the pharmaceutical field, more extensive experience in biochemistry and life sciences may be helpful.
Another consideration in choosing college courses is whether a person would like to design biological processes, or the equipment and instrumentation needed to implement those processes. Agricultural engineering or life sciences can focus more on real processes. On the other hand, chemical engineering departments often require courses in instrumentation and plant design.
Once a person has acquired the necessary degree or degrees to become a bioprocess engineer, a series of tests and documentation is required to become a licensed professional engineer. The first step in this process is taking and passing the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam. This exam consists of a general section and a section specific to the test taker’s area of interest.
After passing the FE exam, a person is known as an Engineer in Training (EIT). All states in the United States (US) have varying requirements for EITs who want to become licensed professional engineers, but all states require that a person work under the supervision of a professional engineer and provide documentation to the state Board of Engineers. The final step in obtaining a license is taking and passing the professional engineer (PE) exam, which qualifies a person to be known as a professional engineer.
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