<p>This is something that has always bothered me. Its pretty obvious what electrical engineers with B.S degrees do, and what PhD's from other fields (hunaities, sciences, even CS) do, but I could never understand what electrical engineering PhD's do. What kind of research do they do? It seems that physicists would do all the research relevent to EE. What kind of work do they do in industrial settings?</p>
<p>Trust me when I say physicists do not really have a good grasp on things that EE’s are taught. You will never see physicists doing serious research in high frequency circuit design, hardware design principles, etc.</p>
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<p>Nor will you ever see physicists worry about how much their designs would cost, like engineers often have to.</p>
<p>my father is a Ph.D in Electrical Eng. He mostly does research in high tech companies on very high-power devices. Such as Gallium Nitride HEMTs (High Electron Mobility Transistors) that can take thousands of voltage. </p>
<p>But year, if u get Ph.D in electrical. You are most likely looking at high tech companies in forefront of research into devices for like the military or commercial use. Or you could become a professor XD</p>
<p>I think over 1 in 10 employees at Qualcomm has a PhD.</p>
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<p>You need to go back and figure out what EEs study in the first place. There is extremely little overlap between EE and physics research. The overlap occurs solely in a couple of the areas of EE - and there are many. You may want to go to any major university’s EE department website and look among the various areas to get a better idea of what EE phds do.</p>