<p>I'm currently a college freshman newly interested in biological engineering, bioengineering, biomedical engineering, or whatever else integrates the life sciences with engineering application. </p>
<p>I've taken a year off to try to figure out what I want to do with my life and straighten out a lot of the burning questions and thoughts left lingering in my head, so, as a result, I have a lot of time on my hands. </p>
<p>I've noticed that bioengineering is a really broad discipline that incorporates different types of engineering. The career opportunities for someone with a bioengineering degree are also vast. I've heard they range from consulting and marketing to working at biotech firms. </p>
<p>I want to get my feet wet. Since I'm a freshman, I'm not eligible for a lot of internships that require applicants to have completed their junior or senior year of college. </p>
<p>What can I do to become exposed to biological engineering besides just reading up on it? </p>
<p>AND as a follow-up question.. What careers can I pursue with a degree in biological engineering, bioengineering, biomedical engineering, and the like? Suggestions on what other related majors I can look into are always helpful! </p>
<p>Any advice is more than welcome! I'm feeling pretty lost.</p>
<p>What interests you most? Discovering a drug, making the drug for commercial use or marketing the drug? Or, inventing medical devices, building medical devices, or marketing the device? Would the device be electronic or would be more material base like stents?</p>
<p>Bioengineering is a very broad field, as you suggested, I would figure out which area you want to go into and then think how you can focus on that.</p>
<p>the problem is that I don’t really know yet, being an inexperienced freshman and all. I think I’m trying to figure out the nature of the work and the work environment of all these different facets (marketing, consulting, production of biomaterials, improvement of agriculture, etc…) of bioengineering. </p>
<p>When someone on a forum says that they had a friend or they, themselves, were hired by a consulting firm after they acquired their bioengineering degree, I don’t know what that means, and I’m trying not to sound stupid when I say this (haha). </p>
<p>I will research a bit more online and come up with some more educated questions, pertaining to bioengineering, for this thread.</p>
<p>Do you think you could tell me about the job prospects and what it is like to be a chemical engineer?</p>
<p>When they say consulting you should immediately think “what kind?” Are you a design consultant, technical consultant, management consultant? What exactly are your responsibilities. Many bioengineering consultants are probably design or technical, i.e. redesigning a medical device for a company that wants to make the change but doesn’t want to change their manufacturing equipment until they are certain it will meet their strict criteria. In these roles there will be a lot of time spent in front of a computer on programs like AutoCAD or Solid Works and then some time with the client and prototypers.</p>
<p>Chemical Engineering has a wide breadth of potential opportunities, as would any engineering major. I started out on the floor of a large manufacturing facility working on purification processes and chromatography columns. That work was fun and engaging, but still a lot of labor. I went on to become an engineer troubleshooting aseptic processes for parenteral pharmaceuticals for a number of years at a large pharmaceutical company. My responsibilities ranged from troubleshooting to process and product design. It was fun, and I would still be there if the company and I hadn’t changed so differently from one another. I then did a short stint in validations, which is incredibly dry and probably why it is mostly contracted out. And, then found myself back in a bulk pharmaceutical manufacturing facility troubleshooting and optimizing manufacturing processes. After about 2 years there I was laid off and now sit in a nice office in front of a computer designing manufacturing facilities to the biofuel and biochemical industries.</p>
<p>Like most ChemEs you will gain a good understanding of the process you work on and the equipment that runs the process. Controls and electronics will come after a while, but are just as important and something that isn’t really taught well in our courses. You can end up in design, like me, but I would still suggest that a young engineer get hands on experience with their process before moving into management or design.</p>