Engineering

Construction, manufacturing, energy, telecommunications…There are so many industries that require a steady flow of skilled engineers, and are vital for Ireland’s economic and social progress, that a good engineering qualification is as close as an educational award gets to a sure thing in terms of career prospects. So why should a engineering graduate avoid jumping straight into the jobs market for the sake of an extra year or two slogging away at the books in fourth level?

Denis McGrath of Engineers Ireland has a very convincing answer: ‘From the graduation year of 2013, anyone who wishes to become a chartered engineer with us has to have a masters degree in engineering, a bachelor degree won’t be enough anymore.’ Graduates with a short-term view may decide to skip the postgraduate option and make money while the going’s good, but in reality the 2013 deadline simply reflects what employers today are demanding. ‘It’s to do with the knowledge economy and the Lisbon Agenda [an EU wide education development plan]; high-tech industries developing in Ireland need engineers who have research skills at a higher level than the honours bachelor degree can provide,’ confirms McGrath.

In common with many other disciplines, the gap between research and taught programmes in engineering is narrowing in terms of the growing element of research work involved in the taught option, research is worth over 40 per cent of the taught electronic engineering programme in Waterford IT for instance, although there remain significant differences. So how do graduates decide upon what is right for them? Ken Deevy, Course Leader in WIT, suggests a few reasons: ‘One reason is duration – a research Master of Engineering takes two years, while a taught ME takes one year. Another reason is some students just prefer to do a taught masters; it’s a different experience with a structured content of exams and lectures. Some are not comfortable in a research environment where it’s pretty much down to just their own efforts.’

The financial benefits are a reason to consider the research option; ‘normally in engineering, the research supervisors in most cases are able to attract funding for their project and can pay students a modest stipend in the region of €10,000-€12,000 a year – so they get paid during their time. And also, some students are actually attracted to the idea of a research project, working on one original and significant piece of work,’ adds Deevy.

Along with the IT sector, electronic engineering is an area in particular that is suffering from skills shortages according to Denis McGrath, and WIT is a good example of the kind of innovative research projects that are carried out in this field at postgraduate level.

Research in the universities and the institutes of technology around the country is a highly specialised pursuit, and the subject matter is often defined by the programme director’s area of expertise. Electronic engineering in WIT is no different; full time research students carry out projects concerned that are concerned with microelectronic chip design – Ken Deevy’s speciality after spending 10 years as a design engineer of analogue devices.

‘I have students working on various different types of data converters, a component that converts real world signals like audio or video. It senses parameters like temperature and humidity into digital format for processing by computer,’ says Deevy. In a recent development, the research students sent their database to fabrication foundries in Europe, and thus were able to carry out tests on the actual prototype microchips that they had designed.

Other projects carried out by students in WIT’s electronic engineering research programme involve wireless communication, automotive electronics and semi-conductor instruments such as high-speed switching devices for telecommunication. Are these projects carried out independently or in conjunction with industry, as is commonly the case elsewhere? ‘Some of them are internally driven, but I would say that over 50 per cent have industry links and in fact some projects are part-funded by industry. The funded projects are collaborations with industry through Enterprise Ireland programmes,’ replies Deevy.

Interestingly however, it’s not just full time research postgraduate students who carry out innovative research with a very real benefit to society, WIT’s taught programme students are involved too. They do not have the time to work on complex chip design projects, but do work on very exciting projects such as RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) that is reshaping and improving the inventory process of businesses around the world. Deevy explains: ‘If you go into stores such as PC World, sometimes on the back of the barcode you’ll see a little coil type thing which is in fact a chip with an antenna. The staff can read all the product details without the barcode if they have a RFID reader. They reckon that within five or six years, the entire stock on supermarket shelves will not be bar coded anymore, but will have a RFID.’

‘Anyone who is inclined toward a science or engineering profession will find electronic engineering challenging and stimulating,’ concludes Deevy, ‘and the prospects are good.’

He is certainly right, but electronic engineering is just one branch of an ever more exciting range of subject areas. A very brief sample of other options would include biomedical engineering in NUI Galway – a sector of the economy that has undergone major expansion in recent years; energy management in DIT – a globally significant area of study in light of the inevitable extinguishing of oil reserves and the consequences of global warming; and chemical engineering in UL – where a graduate diploma conversion course enables graduates of a wide range of engineering and science subjects to enjoy excellent career prospects in Ireland’s highly developed pharmaceutical sector.