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Engineering careers
Anthony “TJ” Jackson tests missile-defense systems for the Navy. Manh-Dan Ngo grows synthetic skin. Matt Weber makes sure buildings won’t fall. This can’t be the stuff of the cubicle-bound nerds in Dilbert, can it? Nope—these engineers are more James Bond-ish than your pocket-protecting stereotype.
“Everything that you deal with everyday, an engineer had something to do with, from your TV or your telephone to your Nikes—there’s research and development going into that,” says Jackson.
You might know the major concentrations in engineering: mechanical, electrical, chemical, civil. But did you know that it’s engineers who can design golf-course grass that’s forever green and make plants that can survive some pretty horrid conditions? There are ocean engineers who can measure vibrating shores, geotechnical engineers who monitor soil and image engineers who make our favorite movies. Don’t forget nuclear engineers, petroleum engineers, heck, engineers are even designing a pill that monitors firefighters’ vital signs when they’re on a job.
As an engineering student, you’ll take classes in physics, math and chemistry. You’ll learn how materials move, and you’ll become an expert in computer-aided design. Here’s a look at some fields available to you future engineers.
If you want to: use engineering to help save lives
Try: Biomedical engineering
Just like: Manh-Dan Ngo
If you’re thinking about being a doctor, consider studying biomedical engineering. “Biomedical engineering is the interface between doctors and medicine,” says Manh-Dan Ngo, a process engineer in the biotechnology field. Engineers, Ngo says, make great med-school candidates and doctors because they learn how the tools and the body work. “You know all the theory behind the technology,” she says. Ngo is currently working on developing synthetic skin to be used for grafting.
In college, Ngo used ceramics and gelatin to make bone substitute. Biomedical engineering students also learn about prosthetic devices, genetic engineering and cellular composition. With biomedical engineering, she says, “you can make a career out of it even if you don’t become a doctor. You don’t have to be stuck in a lab.
Being an engineer, you get exposed to manufacturing, research. You can be an entrepreneur, you can do sales. You can do anything you want.”
If you want to: design buildings
Try: structural engineering
Just like: Matt Weber
“I make buildings stand up,” says structural engineer Matt Weber. “I work with architects and other engineers to make sure that buildings are structurally designed for their purpose.”
Buildings are designed according to local and national codes that take into account what a building will be used for. A warehouse that will hold a lot of heavy things, for example, needs to be built differently than an office building in which there will be constant movement. Buildings aren’t the only things structural engineers construct—dams, bridges and storage tanks are also in their domain.
Before a building gets into the ground, Weber works within the building codes to develop drawings of the structure. “We send out drawings to contractors that say, this is what we want built,” he says. “Throughout the construction phase, it’s our respon-sibility to check submittals from fabricators so that everything agrees with our original design. Our main priority is to design the buildings, but we also have to make sure that what we designed actually stands up out there in the field.”
If you want to: test missile systems
Try: systems or electrical engineering
Just like: Anthony “TJ” Jackson
Anthony “TJ” Jackson tests missile systems for the Department of Defense at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. There, he tests submarine and surface-based missile systems and evaluates performance standards for the U. S. Navy. “You don’t have to be a mathematical genius,” Jackson says about his field. “Engineering is problem solving. We use math to solve problems.”
In high school, Jackson chose to participate in a baseball all-star game instead of a summer engineering program at MIT. But when it was time to pick a major at North Carolina A&T State University, Jackson picked electrical engineering. “It turned out to be the best decision I ever made.”
As an electrical-engineering student, Jackson learned about circuit design and digital electronics. He concentrated on solid-state electronics engineering in graduate school, where he learned about “Silicon Valley computer chips and stuff like that.”
Although he hasn’t done solid-state engineering since he was a student, the skills he learned in engineering school now help him test missile systems. “You can’t teach that stuff in college, but you can utilize those tools you learn—the concepts, the research,” Jackson says. “If you’re given a constraint and conditions, what do you determine is the best solution to this problem?” Article provided by 
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