Future prospects in Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Sciences

[AGNuke]

Future prospects in "Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Sciences"

I hail from India, and thus have given IIT-JEE. Based on its ranking, I might get enrolled for the 4 Year course "Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science" in one of the institutes. Now what I want to know what will be the career prospects strictly related to the branch.

From the institute's own site, I found out that their main focus in the course is studying and developing metallurgical processes, materials like ceramics, polymers, alloys, biomaterials and composite materials.

Also, It is my dream to research in the field of carbon nanotechnology. Mostly because I was quite fascinated with it when I first read about it when I was still I also read (on wikipedia) that materials science deal in carbon nanotechnology (or materials derived from it). Still, I'm not sure whether the scenario is same at college (probably not).

So, my question boils down to two questions:
1. What are the career prospects (R&D inclusive) in carbon nanotechnology, should I also try to do PG in Carbon NanoTech.
2. If not NanoTech, there are other materials to be researched upon and then there's metallurgy. What can be the prospects in them?

I really have quite less idea about the prospects and hence the question. The time remaining at hand before counselling is also not too much (only 2 days to go). Any information will be very useful for me so as to clear my doubts as to choose between by dream (Carbon NanoTech) or conventional job yielding branch.

 

[cgk]

I do not work in this area, but since these topics are directly relevant to large scale industrial production, I would expect them to be highly marketable and would expect them to have a bright future. From the peeks I had into material science, I had the impression that lots of progress is being made, and this will continue to happen for an indefinite amount of time. Better materials are a corner stone of industrial development in all kinds of engineering (on all scales, from the smallest instruments to the largest chemical plants, from the high-tech materials used in the military and aircrafts to the optimization of building materials in civil engineering used in the megeton scale).

 

[AGNuke]

Sounds encouraging. I'm sure it's a long term branch, unwavered by the economy.

But I think I'll stick with more conventional branch like Chemical Engineering/Engineering Physics. The reason is simple - In my country (India), Materials Science is not a well known discipline and also its joint subject - Metallurgical Engineering has not so many application here (unfortunately, the country with the best steel once now doesn't bother to create industrial strength steel and alloys on its own).

Atleast the education in either of the above mentioned branch can help me guarantee a career natively (and quite good, if history of past few years are considered). Then I can pursue a UG course in Materials Science or anything related to Carbon NanoTech abroad (US) if the circumstances gives me a green flag.