<p>Iwill be attending UC Davis in the fall as a biosystems engineering major and I was just curious if anyone could provide first hand experience in describing what I will be studying, if it will be a hands-on major, and what job prospects I can expect with this degree. I picked this major because I want to combine my affluence towards math with my passion to work in helping the environment and biosystems appeared, on paper a nice medium, just wanted some personal experience as well. Also I think I would choose a biotech emphasis.</p>
<p>I can’t offer much depth of what that major entails, but I did attend UC Davis as a biochemical engineer. From what I’ve seen, it’s better if you switch to bio/chemical engineering since we can do the same work as the bio system engineer,but it’s easier for us to find a job.</p>
<p>Okay, thanks for the advive. Biochem engineering actually has also interested me, can you give me some details about that major and what I can do with it? I’m pretty sure I want to work on improving environment quality regardless of what discipline I decide.</p>
<p>bump…</p>
<p>Biochemical engineer are pretty much chemical engineers with background in biology and biochemistry. As a bio/chemical engineer you’re pretty much a ‘universal’ engineer so you can be employed in almost any industry including plastic, medical, pharmaceutical, synthetic fibers, chemicals, environment, petrochemical, food, rubber, etc. The main UC Davis chemical engineering website can provide you the background information you’re looking for. From my experiences, however, I’ve seen most of my colleagues working in the pharmaceutical company or biofuel industry. If you’re interested in the environment as I am, you can worked in the biofuel industry designing photobioreactors, genetically engineering microorganism/plants for biofuel production, designing more efficient biorefinery based production strategy, etc.There are probably other areas revolving around the environment you can worked in that I am not aware of. Hope this help somewhat.</p>