<p>Hello,
I am a graduate student in Electrical Engineering. Since beginning grad. school, I've been hearing different theories on which area of EE will be the way to go in the future. I'm thinking of studying MEMS; however, someone told me that the field is stagnant and all. I'm really confused now.
Please give me your opinions on where you think EE is going in the future. what fields will dominate in the future?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>No engineering field will dominate because all of them are intertwined at this point. ME requires EE and Chemistry and Materials Science and so forth. It’s all needed.</p>
<p>It depends on what you want to do afterwards. Established fields like semiconductors and communication electronics are still best for industry. However, for becoming a faculty member, you need to be in newer fields like mems bio energy and so on. Do some research online and check what new EE faculty members at top schools have done in their postdocs and PhDs. That should give you a good idea on what is hot in academia.</p>
<p>On a separate note, the answer to your question can’t be a general field like MEMS or energy that encompasses subdisciplines, but it is more like specific directions in multi-disciplinary areas, like using MEMS for bio-sensing in point of care technologies or energy harvesting for wireless comm. Look for specific directions that match your background/interest and choose from them.</p>
<p>At the top level of research, everything just meshes together. That said, I’m betting on nanotech.</p>