<p>I'm somewhat worried about job opportunities...</p>
<p>I’m a third year MatE at Cal Poly SLO (I see from your posts that is where you are going too), and most of my classmates that actively looked have internships lined up for this summer. All the Seniors I’ve spoken to have a job lined up for after graduation (to be fair I haven’t asked that many of them).</p>
<p>As for myself, I’ll be working at a Phillips 66 refinery in Los Angeles this summer (was until quite recently a ConocoPhillips refinery, but they split into an upstream unit and a downstream unit on May 1st). I’d be more than happy to answer any questions you might have about MatE, Cal Poly or internships, so shoot me a pm if you’ve got any questions.</p>
<p>(@NBrink: I will be going to school in the south east, so 1/3 of those things won’t apply to me, but as one of the recent flurry of freshmen interested in this field here, I would just like to say that I would REALLY appreciate it if any non-privacy-compromising discussion be framed publicly. I think at least a few of us would love to see as many of these exchanges possible as an open forum, as we may not have our questions articulated until we hear a little more, etc. Not to sound like I have any right to ask this of you, but anything you are comfortable saying/asking here, it would be great, as a few here have interest and concerns ourselves. Thanks for this response, regardless.)</p>
<p>I asked what industries/for what companies do the MatE students NBrink knows work in:</p>
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<p>I’d be happy to help with what I can (only thing I’d be reserved talking about in open forum is salary really). Just about any industry (alright, not software) can make use of materials engineers, but the truth is that most of them (that I know at least) aren’t working in Nanotech, superconductors, etc. (all that stuff that draws people in) </p>
<p>More likely is working in corrosion (a big one that never makes it into the brochures), composites, process control, metallurgy, failure analysis, manufacturing, etc.</p>
<p>I am going to UCSD for ME, but since they do not have an undergraduate MatSci program, I am thinking of taking all my electives in their nanoeng. department. Although their Nanoeng. is yet to be ABET accredited, I’d think that with an ME degree I could also go into the nanotech field. What do you think??</p>
<p>I’m not really big into Nanotech, so I’m really not the best person to answer that (I seem to recall a MatSci grad student on these boards that could probably help you out).
It seems like a good start, but I suspect you’d have to go on to grad school if you really want to get into Nanotech.</p>
<p>I’m probably not the materials person to talk to since I think most of the nanotech field is a scam, but I can tell you where some of my classmates from undergrad went to work. GM, Ford, Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, L’Oreal, GE, Corning, Raytheon, Westinghouse, and a steel company whose name I can’t remember (I think it’s Nucor, but not sure if it was actually them or not.).</p>
<p>Racin, do you think the nanotechnology field is somewhat of a gimmick to draw people in? Obviously it sounds interesting to be able to control properties beyond the range of human sight, but I guess the risk is that it’s not quite as useful as it’s advertised to be. It seems like an actively developing field at most research universities, however, so why do you think it’s a scam?</p>
<p>It’s an active field at most research universities because people giving the funding want to see research in particular fields. For a while now nano has been a very hot topic, as as bio and energy has (A joke used to be to do a nanobiotech funding proposal and you’ll get it funded guaranteed. Now there are entire research centers using that exact type of title.). Look back a little while and you’ll see condensed matter and high temperature superconductors were viewed in a similar way. Think about how hot of a topic fuel cells and hydrogen cars were a few years ago. That went out of favor when the Democrats took over the White House. If the president changes party after this election I’d be willing to bet real money you’d see solar funding decrease and fuel cells come back in.</p>
<p>There are tons of people that have been doing nanotech research since well before the craze took over. Ask anyone that’s done anything with precipitation hardened materials. You’re usually growing nano-sized features. Talk to anyone that’s ever worked on a TEM for the last 80 years.; it’s difficult NOT to look at nano-scale features.</p>
<p>That said, I do believe nano will deliver some real technologies that will help us within our lifetime. However, I’d say believe about 5% of what you see promised on the news.</p>
<p>Although I am uncertain about how definite Nanotech’s future might be, I know for sure that it will progress so long as major regulations for its production and utilization are nonexistant. Despite how skeptical nanotech’s promise to benefit our planet, I believe its mainstream emergence will be inevitable, within the next 5-8 years. By then someone will have found an interesting property (but not a real Nobel-Prize-winning breakthrough) that can be commercialized thoroughly in many industries. I suppose a similar analog was the development of GMO</p>
<p>If I am interested (not positive) in going to graduate school later on for bioengineering/biomedical engineering, would I be better off sticking with MatE as an undergraduate or switching into biomedical engineering? I ask this because some people say MatE is less specialized making it better for undergrad.</p>
<p>Cal Poly SLO has a career survey where you can look up what graduates in your major are doing:</p>
<p>[Graduate</a> Status Report - Career Services - Cal Poly](<a href=“http://www.careerservices.calpoly.edu/content/student/gsr_report]Graduate”>http://www.careerservices.calpoly.edu/content/student/gsr_report)</p>
<p>I really hope the context of this nanotechnology discussion has been about its near-future implications and not its overall implications over the century or more…</p>
<p>The question of nanotechnology’s potential benefits (and harms) to human society is not an IF question, it is a WHEN question. Or more specifically, in the case of people that hope for a nanotech career, will its development reach a stage soon enough that offers the career opportunities they are seeking. It is completely crazy to even doubt the possibilities of nanotechnology (and other technologies and sciences for that matter, like quantum computing, cloning, etc…). It IS part of an extremely high-tech (relative to today) future, unless of course human society collapses from some global disaster first…</p>
<p>Not that more technology will necessarily lead to a better society - it easily may lead to the opposite. I think 95% of the applications you see in TV and movies WILL come true, just unlikely within the time suggested (perhaps not anywhere close), and not necessarily leading to the specific good or bad results suggested. Just because they find a way to cure a disease does not mean society will decide that all people deserve the cure, as is the case today unfortunately.</p>
<p>The question isn’t so much if/when, it’s more of will it be called Nanotechnology as an entire field, and will people with degrees in “Nanotechnology” be the people making those advances, or is it more likely to be people from traditional fields that can find a particular aspect of naontech and apply it to a problem they’re working on.</p>
<p>Nano is moving like any other technology: at a standard pace. I don’t think it’s a field just waiting for a breakthrough quite yet.</p>
<p>Ah, I see what you’re saying Racin.</p>