<p>After talking with my dad some more, I've decided to do my graduate school work on "Applications of Technology in Civil Engineering Works". As I said before, the work can include structural sensors. However, my dad also wanted me to include other areas of civil engineering, and this included adding GPS technology and making forays into environmental engineering.</p>
<p>Will this topic for a master's thesis/project work? Can I incorporate something like this into an engineering senior design project?</p>
<p>It really, really depends upon your advisor. More often than not, you can go into a grad school situation intending to study one thing and end up in something completely different. You can certainly say what you're interested in when you apply to grad programs, but in my experience, going to grad school and telling professors, "This is what I'm going to study," seldom results in funding, especially as a first-year masters student... =) As to whether or not it would be a good masters thesis... well, that's something that you're going to define and redefine and negotiate with your advisor at some point. Heck, even grad students who are in the midst of writing their theses honestly have no idea what the focus of their research is going to end up being!</p>
<p>If you're set in what you want to study, the way I'd personally approach it, just based upon my admittedly narrow experience, is by doing a significant amount of research on what professors are out there and what research they're doing. Try to find someone with the same interests as you do, and then try contacting them directly. Say that you intend to apply as a graduate student to their program, and that you're really interested in applications of technology in civil engineering works, and that your interests seem to be fairly well aligned with what they're researching, and that you'd like to see if there's a possibility of your doing your graduate studies with them, pending acceptance to the program. Of course, this approach only works if going with applications of technology in CE is what you really, really have your heart set upon.</p>
<p>If not, there's something to be said for shopping around once you see what all is possible for civ eng grad students at whatever program you end up at... I'd immediately discarded seismic engineering from the get-go. I thought earthquakes were completely boring, and through a bunch of weird turns of fate and dead ends, that's what I ended up studying, and I <em>really</em> liked it. If I hadn't encountered problems with my original "set-in-stone plan for my future", I wouldn't have found earthquake engineering, and I wouldn't have discovered how cool it actually is.</p>
<p>If it really truly is what you want to do, though, I'd get started on tracking down compatible professors right now.</p>
<p>There is a structural engineering professor at my school who is interested in structural control with neural networks, and the surveying program here (I'm going to same school for grad as I did undergrad) is pretty big on GPS technology. If I could integrate environmental engineering technology in, I could be set at my current department.</p>
<p>That's right; I remember you mentioning that. My mind's going <em>already</em>... yeesh.</p>
<p>You'll probably need to narrow your focus significantly, is what I'll bet your future advisor is going to say... But definitely discuss it with him/her and see what's possible.</p>
<p>The reason I included GPS and environmental engineering technology is to make sure my civil engineer dad who owns his own company would be kept happy. He was really complaining about the structural sensing thing, so I added those two to make him happy.</p>
<p>Anyways, anyone else have any comments to add?</p>