Category Archives: Career

Information on jobs and careers in science and engineering.

Scientists With Lots of Monitors Onboard Ship

photo of computer monitors onboard ship

Fun blog by Linds, a geophysicist, with fun name and tagline: PhD = Pretty huge Dork There’s no crying in grad school! I enjoy including some posts on scientists at work (and plan on trying to intentionally do more of that). The photo shows her office onboard ship – pretty impressive. I thought this monitor was cool.

The boat is a steel monster about 400 feet long. There’s three decks, with cabins, the galley and mess hall, a few different labs, a movie room, reading room and a weight room with white padded walls. It’s all very “Life Aquatic“, if you get the reference. [those that don’t follow the link its a crazy movie – John]
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We have been in transit for the past three days, getting our computers and systems up and running. We arrive at our first deployment spot tomorrow morning at 5:30 am. That is when we’ll put our first ocean bottom seismometer (OBS) down. The OBS itself is a sphere about 16 inches in diameter made of inch thick glass–these suckers are heavy! It’s vacuum sealed with the instrumentation inside and attached to an anchor. When we are done with the survey, the sphere is timed to detach from the anchor and it’ll float to the surface of the water. Our boat will pull up alongside it and we’ll scoop it out with a net and crane.
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woke up today at 3am to get ready for my first watch. We definitely have the worst seas that we have had so far. We are definitely pitching and rolling out here! We deployed our first OBS at 5am and are doing about 1 instrument/hr for the next 24 hours.

Those snippets are from various posts on the blog. Another from earlier:

But there is recent good news: that lone female professor (who is an amazing researcher and is highly respected in the field, chairs many committees both nationally and within the department and was president of the Geological Society of America in the 90’s) has been named the new department chair. I think this move is important in encouraging talented women scientists to apply for positions within the department and shows dedication on the part of the higher-ups to highlighting ‘diversity’ as a priority.

University Pay Rates

Interesting chart from “Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham showing median salaries for various university employees: grad students $17,784; Tenured professors ~$90,000; Football coaches: $1,057,305.

Mentors Prepare Women for Construction Career

photo of Heather Cavitt

Mentors prepare women for construction career

Now Cavitt and other women in the construction school, a part of ASU’s Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering, can give themselves another advantage: Learning from pioneering women who have already risen to leadership positions in the business.

The school recently established its Advancing Women in Construction program, a key part of which is a mentorship project. More than 70 women – and several men – in the construction industry in the greater Phoenix area have signed on to mentor female students and provide them an inside look at life in the industry.
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plan to increase female enrollment from less than 15 percent of total enrollment to 30 percent – or about 200 female students – within five years.

Cavitt says her favorite things about the school’s construction management program are the opportunities to learn beyond the classroom, such as internships and building-project competitions between construction students at other universities. She expects the mentoring program to add significantly to the value of her college education. “I’m excited to learn about the real-world business of construction from women who have been successful at it for many years,” she says.

photo: School of Construction student Heather Cavitt (front) will gain from the experience of Crystal Slawson (center), president of Phoenix Pipelines and Natalie Palmer, the company’s project coordinator, through the school’s Advancing Women in Construction mentorship program.

Toyota Cultivating Engineering Talent

Toyota has a knack for cultivating engineering talent

Toyota now has more than 1,000 York Township employees dedicated to conducting engineering services on vehicles for the North American market. Early on in its expansion project, the Japanese automaker displayed a canny understanding of how to cultivate talent and acquire engineers fresh out of college.

Toyota established a two-year internship program for recent engineering graduates at schools like the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Lawrence Technological University and the University of Wisconsin. At the end of the two-year period, the automaker and the employee reach a mutual decision about whether the employee should continue working there.

Bruce Brownlee, senior executive administrator for external affairs for the Toyota Planning Center at the Toyota Technical Center, has said the company generated a “large pipeline” for engineering talent by leveraging the internship program.

Best Research University Rankings – 2008

The annual ranking of research Universities are available from Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University. The methodology values publications and faculty awards which provides a better ranking of research (rather than teaching). Results from the 2008 rankings of Top 500 Universities worldwide, country representation of the top schools:

location	Top 100	% of World Population	% of World GDP	% of top 500
USA	54	4.6%	27.2%	31.6%
United Kingdom	11	0.9	4.9	8.3
Germany	6	1.3	6.0	8.0
Japan	4	2.0	9.0	6.2
Canada	4	0.5	2.6	4.2
Sweden	4	0.1	0.8	2.2
France	3	0.8	4.6	4.6
Switzerland	3	0.1	0.8	1.6
Australia	3	0.3	1.6	3.0
Netherlands	2	0.2	1.4	2.4
Denmark	2	0.1	0.6	0.8
Finland	1	0.1	0.4	1.2
Norway	1	0.1	0.7	0.8
Israel	1	0.1	0.3	1.2
Russia	1	2.2	2.0	0.4
China		20.5	6.6	6.0
India		17.0	1.9	0.4

There is little change in most of the data from last year, which I think is a good sign, it wouldn’t make much sense to have radical shifts over a year in these rankings. Japan lost 2 schools in the top 100, France lost 1. Denmark (Aarhus University) and Australia (University of Sydney) gained 1. Last year there was a tie so there were 101 schools in the top 100.

The most dramatic data I noticed is China’s number of top 500 schools went from 14 to 30, which made me a bit skeptical of what caused that quick change. Looking more closely last year they reported the China top 500 totals as (China 14, China-Taiwan 6 and China-Hong Kong 5). That still gives them an impressive gain of 5 schools.

Singapore has 1 in the 102-151 range. Taiwan has 1 ranked in the 152-200 range, as do Mexico, Korea and Brazil. China has 9 in the 201-302 range (including 3 in Hong Kong). India has 2 in the 303-401 range.

University of Wisconsin – Madison is 17th again 🙂 My father taught there while I grew up.
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What is an Engineer?

Guest post: What is an engineer? by Chris Gammell

I’ve been having what some would call an identity crisis. How, you ask? I’ve been working on digital electronics.

*GASP*!

I found out that in the early 90s and even earlier, analog engineers routinely switched from working in the analog domain to the digital domain…because it was paying really great. Not only that, most analog engineers had the expertise to do what most early digital engineers were doing (basically stringing together a lot of digital gates in DIP packages). It wasn’t until later that digital engineers started acting more as programmers and VHDL/Verilog experts.

So why do I bring this up? Because I’ve been thinking about the versatility required from engineers in general, not just analog or digital engineers. Routinely engineers are asked to switch modes or tasks or careers in order to get a job done. It’s not that other professions are never asked this; it’s just that the chameleon-like requirement placed on engineers seems to define the profession. Allow me to explain.

What is an engineer?

An engineer puts theories into practice using available devices and elements. They create new products and pass on knowledge through design iterations and trial and error. Their work should be directly applicable to the real world (sometimes in the form of an end-product, sometimes not) and hopefully able to be reproduced successfully in the same form for multiple parties (mass manufacturing). Engineers are often rooted in math and science but require a wide range of skill-sets in order to properly construct an end product.

I think it is important to note that an engineer is different from a scientist, although the line can often be blurred (especially when looking back at the inventors of the early 20th century). In modern times a scientist is usually tasked with pushing the barrier and finding new theories and concepts. This means that the concept will not necessarily be available in product form right away (although this is not always the case), as the product form must be iterated upon and improved for production.
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NASA’s Carl Sagan Fellowships

NASA Exoplanet Science Institute announces the introduction of the Sagan Postdoctoral Fellowship

The NASA Exoplanet Science Institute announces the introduction of the Sagan Postdoctoral Fellowship Program and solicits applications for fellowships to begin in the fall of 2009.

The Sagan Fellowships support outstanding recent postdoctoral scientists to conduct independent research that is broadly related to the science goals of the NASA Exoplanet Exploration area. The primary goal of missions within this program is to discover and characterize planetary systems and Earth-like planets around nearby stars.

The proposed research may be theoretical, observational, or instrumental. This program is open to applicants of any nationality who have earned (or will have earned) their doctoral degrees on or after January 1, 2006, in astronomy, physics, or related disciplines. The fellowships are tenable at U.S. host institutions of the fellows’ choice, subject to a maximum of one new fellow per host institution per year. The duration of the fellowship is up to three years: an initial one-year appointment and two annual renewals contingent on satisfactory performance and availability of NASA funds.

We anticipate awarding 3 – 4 fellowships in 2009. Please note that these are postdoctoral Fellowships only. Previous Michelson Fellowship holders are fully eligible to apply.

Science Policy Research Virtual Intern

externs.com is another curiouscat.com web site that lists internship opportunities. I am surprised that virtual internships and externships have not grown much more popular in the last 5 years. Scientists and Engineers for America do have such a virtual internship:

Members of the first Scientists and Engineers for America (SEA) virtual intern class can be located anywhere in the world and will work remotely on specific SEA projects. Intern will research the positions elected officials and candidates for office take on science policy issues.

The internship is for between 10 to 20 hours per week and can be done anywhere, as long as you have a computer, internet connection, and telephone. The dates of the internship are flexible accepted on a rolling basis.

Also see the externs.com science internships and engineering internships. If you have an internship you would like included, please add it (there is not cost for the site, listing or using).

Ruby on Rails Job Opportunity

I, John Hunter, work for the American Society for Engineering Education (Information Technology Program Manager): my work on this blog is not associated with ASEE and the opinions I express are mine and not those of ASEE. That said, we are looking for a Ruby on Rails developer at ASEE, in Washington DC. So please apply, if you are interested.

I could list details but essentially we develop web applications using Ruby on Rails. We are seeking someone with the experience and skill to be an immediately productive member of a team working on rails applications. They will need to be able to code features with little supervision and follow ruby on rails and our coding conventions. Programmers are given responsibility but within our conventions – this has been something we have slipped on prior to moving to Ruby on Rails but now we are focused on doing this well.

We do have a senior Ruby expert so we do have a senior person to assign the most complex tasks to. We are very focused on following best practices in ruby and ruby on rails development. And we are very focused on creating applications that follow rails, and ASEE coding conventions in order to maximize performance and minimize life cycle costs. My experience indicates that as a programmer shows they can take on more responsibility they will be given more responsibility.

The ideal candidate will love Ruby on Rails. For those of you who are not programmers loving your job might seem odd. But a large number of those that develop using Ruby on Rails do. And those will fit in well. Those that don’t appreciate the beauty of Ruby code can still succeed in this position, but might feel out of step with how we work. Contact Keith Mounts or me if you are interested. We are looking to hire a permanent employee that will work in our office, but we may consider hiring a contractor that could work remotely on a 3 to 6 month project that we have recently started.

The Technology Job Market is Strong

Technology: It’s Where the Jobs Are by Arik Hesseldahl, Business Week:

Here’s a hint for high school graduates or college students still majoring in indecision: Put down that guitar or book of poetry and pick up a laptop. Study computer science or engineering
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Seattle added a net 7,800 jobs [in 2006], followed by the New York and Washington (D.C.) metro areas, which added more than 6,000 jobs apiece. The fastest-growing area on a percentage basis was the combined metro area of Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif., which saw its tech-employment figures grow by 12%.
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The highest concentration of technology workers – 286 for every 1,000 workers – was in, no surprise, Silicon Valley. Boulder, Colo., came in second, with 230, and Huntsville, Ala.; Durham, N.C.; and Washington rounded out the top five in density.

Now for the answer to the question on everyone’s mind: Where are the highest salaries? That would be Silicon Valley, where the average tech worker is paid $144,000 a year. That’s nearly double the $80,000 national average for tech jobs.
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More than 850,000 IT jobs will be added during the 10-year period ending in 2016, which would be a rise of 24%. Add all the jobs that will replace retiring workers, and the total increase could be a tidy 1.6 million. That means one job in every 19 created over the course of the next decade will be in technology.

And while demand for tech-savvy employees is certainly multiplying, another survey, this one from the Computing Research Assn. and released in March, found a 20% drop in the number of students completing degrees in computer-related fields, and the number of students enrolling in these programs is the lowest it’s been in 10 years, as far back as the data go.