UB - University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

Why Electrical Engineering?

Electrical engineering is an integral part of our lives: biomedical instrumentation developed by electrical engineering—e.g. the pacemaker, CAT scan, and MRI—saves lives; nanotechnology produces new materials and devices; consumer electronics and video games produced by electrical engineers provide entertainment around the world. Electrical engineering contributes, on some level, to nearly everything we do.

Whether we are working with environmental engineers, a car manufacturing company, or medical specialists, electrical engineers are involved at nearly every step from design to implementation for electronic devices and systems.

What do our students do?

In addition to the preparation for immediate employment as a practicing electrical engineer, the BSEE provides an excellent foundation for further study. This includes graduate-level work in manufacturing fields for which a technical base is desirable or preparation for a career in academia. Other opportunities exist for further study in medicine or business, where the combination of electrical engineering skills is uniquely valuable.

The field of electrical engineering has long been recognized as a prime source of management talent. Today’s competitive world needs managers and decision-makers who can apply mathematical concepts and scientific management techniques to the technical problems that arise. An electrical engineer not only understands these problems, but is able to devise and implement methods to solve them.

Opportunities for electrical engineers—in Western New York, nationally, and internationally—include research, design, production, technical sales, medicine, and law. Salaries for electrical engineers are among the highest in the technical fields. Companies that have hired our graduates include Cisco, Hewlett Packard, Intel, AMD, IBM, Ford, General Electric, General Motors, Lockheed Martin, Lucent Technologies, Moog, Micron, Motorola, Nokia, Qualcomm, Rockwell, Sun Microsystems, and Texas Instruments, to name just a few. Our alumni have become members of industry, faculty at universities, and have established companies, such as Atto Technology and MTI.

Electrical engineering provides the broad training to make you adaptable—as technologies evolve—and successful throughout your career.

What do Electrical Engineers really do?:

• Signal Processing—Transform a 3-kHz phone line into a 56 kb/s modem and 1.5-10 Mb/s ADSL.
• Telecommunications—Design and build the next-generation Internet.
• Wireless Communications and Networking—Provide tools without tether.
• Sensors, Microwave, and Image Processing—Map the surface of earth and planets or reveal the heart beat of a one-inch fetus.
• Micro-Electronics—Turn sand (yes, sand) into CPUs and memory.
• Energy Systems and Power Electronics—Make small MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems) and big motors run by controlling the power from picowatts to megawatts and voltage from nanovolts to megavolts.
• Nano-Electronics and Nano-Optics—Create new materials and discovers novel phenomenon by manipulating atoms and molecules.
• Plasma Processing—Give energy to electrons and ions.
• Laser and Photonics—Tame photons and generates the most brilliant light.
• MEMS, CAD, and Microsystems—Design and predict performance of systems.

Links to further information about Electrical Engineering:

Sloan Career Cornerstone Center: Careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, Math & Healthcare

Occupational Outlook Handbook: Engineers