Hi, I am currently an undergraduate Electrical Engineering major who is undecided on what exact career path to take. What I do know is I am not interested in working in industry at all. The thought of leaving school and not doing something theoretical make me sick to my stomach. My school (University at Buffalo) mainly focuses on circuits and lab parts of EE which I completely despised. The only parts of Electrical Engineering I liked were Signals and Systems and Communication theory. After my junior year of dealing with highly practical parts of Electrical Engineering, I realized that I really do would like to go to grad school. I actually am highly interested in Neuroscience and would like to go to a grad program that does research in bio robotics. But I’m not entirely sure what major I should do in grad school. Ideally, I would love to work in a field that uses a lot of mathematics (for I love math) and deals with neuroscience or signals aspect of neurology. But I’m not too sure how I can get about to going to my goals.
Have you considered bioengineering or biomedical engineering? It covers a broad range (everything from biomaterials to robotics), and it sounds like your interests might fit in somewhere there. Also, there’s a lot of cool stuff with brain-machine interfaces for robotics that seems like it might be up your alley - neuroscience, signal processing, and a lot of math to control robots.
Thanks for replying, Yes I have considered Bioengineering, but I’m not sure if that field would require me to focus on the signal processing and math part of the things I want to do. I would love to learn biology but I would only want to focus on the part of biology that deals with the brain! So would doing a grad program in biomedical engineering allow me to do that?
Bioengineering is really broad, and the required curriculum (and research going on) can vary dramatically from school to school. If you want to get into biorobotics (either through bioengineering or some other direction), you will need basic biology. To understand the biology of the brain, you’ll need to take introductory biology. However, if you go into it with the perspective that it’s relevant to/helpful for something that really excites you, it can make it much more interesting.
I’d recommend looking at the research and course requirements at different schools. You might find they have what you’re looking for. For example, I’ve been accepted to Carnegie Mellon and Harvard for a bioengineering PhD. At CMU, I would be working with signal processing from neural implants for robotic prosthetic control. At Harvard, I’d be working on collaborative, bio-inspired robotics (all the interviews I got were from researchers in robotics). And Harvard’s course selection is completely open - as long as they’re approved by your advisor, there are no specific classes you have to take.
This may be a shot in the dark, but someone I know is at the University of Maryland doing their PhD in EE with research that involves doing signal processing on neural signals. I unfortunately don’t know any more beyond that, but it could be a jumping off point.
Start by finding out who does the kind of research you are interested in. Then check what departments they are in. That should give you some idea of the departments you need to apply to. You might find that those who do the kind of research you are interested in are in Bioengineering departments or maybe they are in Electrical Engineering departments. The key is to find an advisor who does the kind of research you want.