Masters Abroad (Part-2)

In the earlier blog post on masters abroad I have extensively covered the major aspects of preparation prior to applying for foreign universities and what could one expect in each step. Here in this post, I would like to shed some light on the job prospectus after completing the master's studies. The major three areas where one can opt/find a job are:

1. University.
2. Research centre.
3. Company/industry.

At university/academia, the origin of any research, innovation, and development actually begin. This is the community of professors, researchers, and students who perform pure research. Any new idea starts shaping based on the fundamental theoretical knowledge of the underlying physical phenomenon. The community make use of their strong fundamental theoretical knowledge, mathematical models, numerical analysis, and analytical skills to test their hypothesis and provide theoretical validation. The community is also involved in writing scientific journal papers that can be accessed by any general public on the renowned publications about the finding of their work.

At the research centre, the theoretically validated hypothesis available from academia is tested in a laboratory environment by mimicking the real-life scenario in a scaled-down model. This is the community of researchers, engineers, and technicians who perform applied research. By performing numerous tests a huge amount of data is collected to make further assumptions and calculations so that better engineering judgment could be made. An example of a research centre can be found here.

At the company/industry, the end-user products are made available. This is the community of engineers, product, and project managers who perform applied research. The idea that which successfully passes through the university and research centre is finally made available to the general public as an end-user product and any further improvements needed is passed back to the earlier two for modifications.

All the above three stakeholders work hand in hand by providing one-to-one feedback for improving the end-user experience of any product they build.

 

Job markets / key areas for next 10-20 years:

1. Companies should strictly comply UNSDG goals.
2. Companies should obey triple bottom line.

United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (or UNSDGs) is the framework adopted by the United Nations in order to take action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity. Some of the major sustainable development goals that will impact the engineering sector are energy, transportation, and manufacturing.

 

 

 

 

The sustainable development goals emphasizes that the development should balance social, economic, and environmental sustainability, in other words also termed as triple bottom line. I have extensively covered the topic of triple bottom line in another blog post.

Photo courtesy: Harvard Business School Online.

Taking into consideration of the above-said criteria some of the sectors that show great potential are:

• Renewable energy sector (ex: solar, onshore, offshore, and floating offshore wind turbine).
• Battery technology (ex: hydrogen fuel cells).
• Electric vehicles (ex: Tesla, Tata Motors, Ola Electric).
• Need for 5-dimensional military approach: land, sea, air, space, and cyber warfare.
• Ships and ferries powered by wind, solar, and battery technology.
• Material science and engineering.
• Safer nuclear energy.

As we are going through the digital revolution (or Industry 4.0) I am sure most of you might have already experienced that its impact is present in almost all areas of our day-to-day activity. As they say, data is the new oil for the 21st century, the companies are collecting a huge of data in various forms and harvesting them into useful information. This is happening at a massive scale and it will continue to grow at a much faster pace here on. Accordingly, new-age jobs are created which is showing a paradigm shift in the way we work and interact. It is making basic computer programming very essential, especially for data processing and analysis (ex: Matlab, Python, C++).

 

Photo courtesy: www.hackster.io/amit-maniar/industry-4-0-connecting-traditional-hardware-to-internet-bd83ce

 

Short insight on Industry 4.0:

• Bridge between man, machine, and the product.
• Rise in data volumes.
• Analytics and business-intelligence capabilities.
• Human-machine interaction.
• Transferring digital instructions to the physical world.

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I hope you liked this blog post. Feel free to provide your comments and feedback and I am open to having any conversation regarding the same. Thank you for your time and support!