Department Seminar Series: Lilian Josephson, Ph.D.

Chemical engineering is evolving rapidly, and graduates must be ready to design innovative, market-driven products that respond to societal needs and technological change. Yet most curricula still prioritize process design, with limited integration of product design. This talk examines why process design persists, reviews recent advances in product design education, and presents “structured innovation,” a framework for teaching chemical product design.

Classic models such as Moggridge and Cussler’s needs–ideas–selection–manufacture center on current customer needs and brainstorming. We argue this starting point constrains opportunity discovery and produces unfocused ideation. In response, we

redesigned our year-long senior capstone—co-taught by an innovation/strategy professor and a chemical engineering professor—around structured innovation.

In semester one, students build ideation skills through staged methods and weekly “frontiers of science” talks that anchor exploration in chemical engineering domains. By the end of the term, self-selected teams articulate a “problem worth solving.” In semester two, teams develop prototypes and business cases addressing that problem.

Structured innovation organizes opportunity discovery by problem definition: well-defined, ill-defined, and undefined. Students use different tools to probe undefined futures and techniques to surface ill-defined problems and, then translate insights into well-defined problem statements suitable for product design development. This approach equips students to navigate uncertainty and define compelling product

opportunities. We describe implementation and early outcomes from our pilot years, including student feedback, and offer guidance for embedding structured innovation within capstone product design.

Dr. Lilian Lam Josephson is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Johns Hopkins University’s Whiting School of Engineering. Josephson has a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Delaware, and her research expertise centers on liquid product design and innovation, with multiple chemical formulation patents granted. Her professional background includes valuable experience and industry connections in consumer packaged goods, complemented by graduate training in biopharmaceutical development. Josephson’s vision is to expand the chemical engineering product design curriculum and support design excellence across undergraduate and graduate programs.

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