<p>Hey all,</p>
<p>So I am a third year engineering student in Aerospace Engineering. I have scattered interests from dynamics/controls, to computational sciences and to robotics. Due to this, I have gained many skills in most of these areas, particularly the computational sciences and robotics. This being said, I have gained a number of opportunities this summer, all on different topics and am having a hard time figuring out which I should do based off my interests, since all these projects interest me. I have thought about grad school, but now days part of me questions if this is what I will want to do right after I am done with my undergrad. This confusion makes what I choose to do seem more important based on the opportunities that may come from each. Here they are:</p>
<p>~Work at NASA's JPL doing research and development of image processing, path planning and controls algorithms for drones to make them completely autonomous and able to maneuver via just a couple cameras</p>
<p>~Work at Sandia Lab in New Mexico developing some AI and machine learning codes to give robots a "brain"</p>
<p>~Do some material modeling research this summer for a professor at my university who is simulating the human voice. I would basically setting up and doing experiments to define an accurate model for the various structural properties of our vocal chords (since we don't have a model apparently) so he could use this model for the simulation</p>
<p>~Do work at Purdue adding to research and development towards a massive parallel library for fluid and solid mechanics simulations. This is a large project that this professor, various researchers from Sandia Lab and a couple other universities are working on, so it is a big deal. I would have a journal publication at the end of this summer after the research I do for this and would have to learn some advanced topics on compilers and do some testing of the algorithms on supercomputers at Purdue.</p>
<p>I may or may not have any other opportunities after I find out the results from some other applications I completed a while back, but assuming these are all of them, which opportunity do you all think gives me the best opportunities given that I don't know if I want to go to grad school or industry after?</p>
<p>I understand for grad school, research at all is valuable and all of these are research oriented. However, for industry, how much will any of these help with finding a job? It isn't like working with supercomputers and simulations will stand out much, they never have undegrads do that sort of stuff in a company, given they have those opportunities at all. Though I believe robots are in our future, I don't know how many opportunities this gives me for jobs in industry either. Anyways, any insight you can give me is valueable. Just a few months ago I thought I knew perfectly what I wanted but after seeing some of these opportunities and pondering about life after school, I don't know what to do.</p>
<p>Thanks in advance!</p>