A career in engineering enables change. Engineers are the world’s problem solvers. Students who choose a degree in engineering and pursue engineering science jobs will be prepared for a career path that provides them the opportunity to help solve a variety of different social and economic issues across the world.
I recently spoke with Dr. Ryan Integlia, our Assistant Professor, of Colleges of Innovation & Technology and Engineering. He often speaks with students who are interested in using electrical engineering degrees to make a positive impact on our world. He shared with me that he starts by discussing with them some of the initiatives engineers are currently working to solve. Then, they take a look ahead at the issues that engineering science jobs can help solve within the next 10 years – solutions that today’s college students could potentially be a part of with a career in engineering.
The National Academy of Engineering is a great resource for some of the major initiatives engineers are undertaking in 2015. Some of these include:
- Providing access to clean water: One out of six people in the world are not within reach of clean water. In fact, unclean water has caused more deaths than war. In addition, one out of three people lack common sanitation, which is a necessary component for clean water. Engineering science jobs are hard at work finding ways to supply and maintain drinkable water to places in need.
- Creating better medicines: Engineers have a long history of improving personalized medicine, and this is not stopping anytime soon. One way engineers are helping is by creating new systems to quickly analyze a patient’s genetic makeup. Another way engineers are supporting this cause is by finding innovative ways to perform fast diagnostics on patients to identify microscopic chemicals in blood.
- Restoring and improving urban infrastructure: Infrastructures in the United States and countries across the globe require constant advancement in development. Engineers have the opportunity to change the culture of communities with modern infrastructure designs and groundbreaking solutions that contribute to advancing society. by solving infrastructural problems, engineers are helping to create more sustainable communities for the future.
Over the next 10 years, a career in engineering will enable profound impact in the following areas:
- Health infrastructure and infrastructure security
- Scalable rapid manufacturing to appropriately mitigate the outsourcing of jobs and the associated manufacturing capacity
- e-learning, mobility and information accessibility for globally connected world
- Food and environmental security issues addressed through intelligent automation and embedded monitoring
- Exploring the water energy nexus for a sustainable future
- Robotics and autonomous vehicles as a new wave of pervasive technology
- Nano-scale devices for computing, manufacturing and ubiquitous applications
- Fusion and the survivability of alternative energy
- Poverty alleviation and over population
- The integration of precision agriculture and robotics
Everyday, engineers are hard at work creating new, innovative ways to advance and progress civilization. One of the benefits of an engineering education is the power it gives you to develop advanced solutions to find new ways to make our world a better place.
Learn more about an electrical engineer degree or computer engineering degree and join our students in making the world a better place.