Pharmaceutical engineering is becoming a distinct and well recognized engineering discipline, as indicated by the rapidly growing number of programs that have recently been developed. Nevertheless, pharmaceutical engineering is still a new engineering field in academia and it is important to be able to define its core disciplines and its range of activities, especially since pharmaceutical engineering curricula and the courses that constitute them are still being identified.

In this talk, the current status of pharmaceutical engineering education is examined, with specific reference to the Pharmaceutical Engineering program which has was established at NJIT in 2002 - one of the first of such programs established worldwide. This presentation discusses what can constitute the common knowledge in this rapidly growing field and examines the education challenges and opportunities associated with the definition of the core courses, elective courses, and curriculum activities for such programs.