Science is a field that is ever-evolving and developing, it is something that feeds a person’s curiosity. The field of science is like an ocean full of amazing opportunities as on one side you can explore new things in labs while on the other side, you can do wonders just sitting in front of a laptop screen and researching. Science has ample mainstream traditional career choices that people mainly opt for like becoming an engineer or a doctor. However, it is not always that you will find yourself inclining to these choices. Well, the greatest thing about a career in science is that it does not limit you to one path, the field itself is something that allows you to always experiment and learn new things. So why not allow yourself to experiment and look for some of the unconventional career choices in the field. Trust me you would not be disappointed!
Let’s explore a few unconventional career choices in science:
1. Geo-Informatics
Geoinformatics is a branch of science and technology which uses information science as a base to address the problems of geography, cartography, geology, geosciences and related branches of science and engineering.
The application of geoinformatics is in many fields including in-car navigation systems, virtual globes, environmental modelling and analysis, business location planning, architecture and archaeological reconstruction.
There are various job opportunities in geoinformatics like GIS Technician, GIS Analyst, Geologist, UrbanPlanner, Cartographer, GIS Developer, and many more.
2. Environment Engineering
Environmental engineering is a discipline that contains scientific topics like chemistry, biology, ecology, geology, hydraulics, microbiology, and mathematics to create solutions that will help prevent and control contamination in our natural atmosphere protect and also improve the health of living organisms and improve the quality of the environment
Various governmental and non-governmental bodies require environmental engineers who can work for designing of environmental policy and regulation development, contaminated land management and site remediation and ensure environmental health and safety of people.
3. Agriculture Engineering
It is the engineering of agricultural production and processing. Agriculture Engineering is concerned with the design and development of farm implements and machines, as well as the production, processing, transportation, and storage of agricultural commodities.
This engineering collaborates the disciplines of mechanical, civil, electrical, Food science and chemical engineering principles with a knowledge of agricultural principles according to technological principles.
Agricultural Engineers can work as plant physiologists, food inspectors, agronomists, soil scientists and many more.
4. Ceramic Engineering
Ceramic engineering is engineering creating objects from inorganic, non-metallic materials with the use of science and technology.
It is done either through the process of heat or at lower temperatures using precipitation reactions from high-purity chemical solutions.
Ceramics are used in many technological industries. The products of technical ceramics include tiles used in the Space Shuttle program, gas burner nozzles, ballistic protection, nuclear fuel. Apart from this, they are also widely used in electronics and optics.
The scope of ceramic engineering is wide with lots of opportunities in the private & public sectors. You can go for various domains such as Aerospace, Mining, Construction, Electronics, Medical, Optical Fibers, Sports, Transportation, Military & etc.
5. Solar Engineering
Solar engineers deal with the planning, design, and development of solar-powered power plants, systems, and products. They may manage anything from large-scale municipal projects to home
Solar engineers are also responsible for the measurement, analysis, improvement and installation of new or existing solar power plants.
They perform site-specific engineering analyses or evaluations of energy efficiency and solar projects involving residential, commercial, or industrial customers.
6. Hydraulic Engineering
It is a sub-discipline of civil engineering and involves the study of flow and conveyance of fluids, principally water and sewage. This engineering is related to the design of bridges, dams, channels, canals, etc.
You can explore many employment opportunities working as a hydraulic engineer in various industries, including manufacturing and distribution, water conservation, engineering design or engineering consulting.
7. Geological Engineering
This discipline of engineering is concerned with the application of geological science and engineering principles to other fields of engineering such as civil engineering, mining, environmental engineering, and forestry, among others.
Geological engineers assist the work of other engineering disciplines, for example, assessing the suitability of locations for civil engineering or mapping the location for mining operations.
A geological engineer can pursue different roles like a geotechnical engineer, geologist, geophysicist, mine engineer etc.
8. Computational Linguistics
Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field that draws on the expertise of various areas such as linguistics (the study of languages), psychology and computer science. Computational linguists develop computer systems that deal with human language.
The scope of computer linguists is wide in this digital age.
They build products and applications that can perform tasks such as speech or voice recognition (e.g., Siri, Alexa), speech synthesis, search engines (Google Search), machine translation (e.g., Google Translate), grammar checking, text mining, automated text analysis, among others.
Computational linguistics is also helpful in situations involving social media and the Internet. For example, for providing content filters in chat rooms or on website searches, grouping and organizing content through social media mining, document retrieval, and clustering.
Computational approaches are also important to support linguistic research. For example, in corpus linguistics or historical linguistics.
9. Computer-Aided Drug Design
Developing and introducing a new drug in the market is a costly affair that requires time and money, but the onset of Covid 19 has made the world understand the need and importance of a better and faster drug designing system.
Computer-Aided Drug Design or CADD is a combination of advanced computational techniques, biological science and chemical synthesis to facilitate the drug discovery process. CADD techniques are used for the rapid assessment of chemical libraries in order to guide and speed up the early-stage development of new active compounds.
Advanced computational applications have been shown to be effective tools and notable successes have been achieved using these techniques. This field is for those professionals who are interested in making their career in the field of drug discovery and development and research industry.
10. Technical Writers
Science as a field involved extensive research. There is innovation happening every day! In this scenario, it gets difficult to keep a track of this ever-flowing new development. So maintaining proper communication to document these new developments has become as essential and significant as the development itself.
Technical writing deals in exactly that. It refers to the writing of scientific documents by writers in the field of science. These writers may or may not be the ones who conducted the actual research but assisted the scientists involved in the generation of data. They help in compiling data to present the information in an appropriate manner.
The importance of this profession cannot be ignored as accurate and clear reporting of information is extremely important or otherwise meticulous research can appear flawed.
As a technical writer, you may work for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, medical communication agencies, medical education companies, health care professionals associations, academic institutions, medical and health care book publishers, trade publications, among others. Some examples of technical writer job roles are scientific writers regulatory writers, promotional writers, health care marketers, health care journalists, or communication specialists.
Written by: Yukta Joshi
