Aerospace Engineering

Aerospace Engineering involves the design and development of airplanes, space craft and missiles. The continued push into outer space will ensure that over the next 30 years, there will be substantial demands for well-trained aerospace engineers. Although international treaties governing the use of outer space have been agreed to, both industry and governments are pushing hard to be first in space in a lot of areas. With efforts to make humans a multi planet species placing a colony on mars is already underway. Aerospace engineers will play a leading role in the design and development of spacecraft designed to ferry people from earth to mars and return. In addition, there are a number of commercial organizations involved in space tourism industry. 

Aerospace engineering has extensive military uses and significant amounts of Research and Development (R&D) is performed both by the military and by industry on behalf of the military. Civilian and commercial use of aerospace engineering is substantial and is likely to increase as private organizations expand into space.  Both Virgin Atlantic and Amazon.com have space tourism ventures underway designed to take passengers on suborbital flights to the edge of space.   Try Engineering has lots of interesting resources for students interested in engineering.

Chemical Engineering

Chemical engineering uses science to produce or transform chemicals from a variety of raw materials, creating drugs and other useful items. In the past petroleum products have been a large part of the base raw materials used to create items such as plastics, gasoline and medicine. Now and in the future, there will be substantial efforts at decarbonization in order to remove carbon from the atmosphere and convert it to a non-polluting form. Chemicals engineers will lead these efforts.

Like many subjects, computer modeling and AI are making an impact in this area, allowing some drugs to be tested in silico using modeling and simulation.

Civil Engineering

Civil engineers build roads, bridges, dams and other infrastructure projects. Given the lack of substantial investments over the last 20 years, civil engineering could well prove to be a field of tremendous demand over the next 30 years. With aging infrastructure such as bridges, dams and highways tremendous investments will be required to bring these items back from their current state of disrepair.  With changes in the climate, sea level is expected to rise as much as and additional 30 centimeters (12 inches) over the next century. For flood control levies, retainer walls and other methods will be required to prevent flooding in coastal areas. This is likely to become one of the largest challenges facing society over the remainder of the 21st century.  Water and sewage will also be significantly affected by the change in sea level.
Computer software such as computer aided design and computer aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) software is widely used to model Civil engineering projects. Software for structural design and building cost estimation are also widely used.  

Genetic Engineering

Genetic engineering is an area that is rapidly advancing and will have immense impact on humans and our environment over the next 30 years. Various kinds of foods are being engineered and given properties, including resistance to certain chemicals that are desired by their designers. These are often referred to as Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) and have become controversial in some instances.

Monsanto has genetically engineered a variety of crops including corn and soybeans that are resistant to their herbicide Roundup allowing the herbicide to be sprayed without affecting them but killing other plants that are exposed. Other plants have been engineered and patented so that their seeds are infertile, requiring farmers to buy new seed each year.  
This technology is being used to engineer bacteria that is capable of manufacturing a variety of drugs and chemicals that are useful to society. Bacteria capable of decomposing various kinds of waste materials have also been developed. In addition to all of the good they can do; genetically engineered microorganisms have the potential to do considerable damage as well. Because they are living organisms that reproduce and can spread rapidly their accidental or deliberate release into the environment can have unanticipated and dangerous consequences.

The discovery of a new gene editing techniques called clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9) editing are allowing scientist to make changes to the DNA of any organisms endowing them with novel characteristics as well as correcting errors that may cause disease or death. There is an international race to gain mastery of this technology. Although ethical guidelines have been established for its use, scientist in some countries have ignored them and proceeded with their own research programs. This recent example by Chinese scientist He Jiankui is instructive in what the technology may be capable of once it is fully mastered. Long rumored efforts to re-engineer humans endowing them with enhanced cognitive abilities may not be science fiction after all.

Gene Drive is another genetic engineering technology being developed to control the ability of certain species to reproduce. This is currently being used to control malaria carrying mosquitoes but could be use on any organism. Mosquitoes are eliminated by controlling their ability to reproduce and over time eliminating them from the population.

Mechanical Engineering

Mechanical engineering is the science of building systems with mechanical parts. This is possibly one of the premiere areas of engineering which deals with building systems for use in almost every aspect of our environment from the very large to the very small. Perhaps one of the most exciting areas where Mechanical Engineers are busily at work is the are of Robotics.  There is tremendous effort in this discipline from industrial robots to systems capable of autonomous remote operations.

The US military through its Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA) is one of the leading sponsors of robotics research. One of DARPA's earlier Grand challenges was autonomous vehicles or cars that could drive themselves. DARPA offered $1 Million prize in 2004 to the first team capable of autonomously navigating a course between Barstow California and Primm, Nevada. None of the vehicles completed the course so a year later the prize was raised to $2 Million. The second challenge was held in the California-Nevada desert and was won by Stanford. This research effort by DARP was the forerunner of todays autonomous cars which are now emerging for commercial uses.

Electrical engineers design and build electrical systems from very small circuits to very large systems such as the electric grid. A Smart Grid is one of the large infrastructure projects that will be put in place over the coming decade. With the change from fossil fuel generators to renewable sources the power such as wind and solar the grid is being redesigned for increased resilience.

Perhaps one of the most widely respected engineering societies in the United States is the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). This is one of the larger professional societies in the industry and they sponsor numerous programs for students interested in engineering. They are also quite active in establishing US and global standards in the industry.