Our daily lives consist of doing a lot of technically difficult things requiring very little effort on our parts. We often take those things for granted. For example, consider driving to and from work. Driving takes considerably less effort than walking or riding a bike. It is only possible because of engineering. Viewed through that lens, driving to and from work is enough to make one wonder what the world would be like without engineers.
At Rock West Solutions in California, a team of engineers is constantly working on signal processing and sensor technologies for healthcare, defense, aerospace, law enforcement, and more. The company also offers engineering services to clients looking to develop their own technologies. Rock West’s entire business model is grounded in engineering.
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Engineering Is a Broad Field
The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines engineering as “the application of science and mathematics by which the properties of matter and the sources of energy in nature are made useful to people.” If the definition seems overly broad, congratulations. You have figured out one of the characteristics of engineering as a field. It is a rather broad field indeed.
Machine shops rely on engineers to design and test the parts they fabricate. Construction companies employ engineers to design everything from buildings to road infrastructure. Across the world you can find jobs related to chemical, electrical, biomedical, and architectural engineering. In fact, the engineering field is so broad that it is very difficult to quantify.
Perhaps this is why engineering programs at colleges and universities are so specific. One university might place a heavy emphasis on electrical engineering. Meanwhile, another university specializes in mechanical engineering. All of the engineers they graduate go on to design things that affect nearly every area of life.
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Advancing Aerospace Engineering
Aerospace is an industry in which engineering becomes highly visible every time you board a plane. Furthermore, engineering is so important to aerospace that multiple organizations sponsor annual competitions designed to get university students involved with hands-on engineering experience.
One such competition is the annual Design, Build, Fly competition sponsored by the AIAA Foundation. Every year, the competition’s participants build unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that are put through a series of tests to determine a winner. This year’s competition will require participants to build UAVs capable of transporting shipping containers with built-in sensors. The vehicles will also have to be able to deploy, operate, and recover a tower sensor for surveillance purposes.
The School of Engineering at the University of Alabama Birmingham was selected to participate in this year’s competition for the very first time. Their design proposal was impressive enough to beat out proposals from vaunted schools like Stanford and MIT.
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Training Tomorrow’s Engineers
The University of Alabama is just one of countless colleges and universities training tomorrow’s engineers. How many of their graduates will go on to offer engineering services at companies like Rock West Solutions? How many will go on to work in engineering jobs involving aerospace, infrastructure, or hydroelectric power? Here’s the thing: this post could continue to list jobs requiring engineering skills for page after page. Engineering is so prolific that mentioning every single engineering job would be nearly impossible.
Much of what we take for granted in our daily lives is somehow connected to the engineering field. The tools we use to perform our daily tasks were at least partly developed through engineering. The homes we live in, the buildings we work in, and entertainment venues we play in all exist because engineers do what they do. What would the world look like without them?
