One field of medical devices I have flair for is the Bio medical engineering field, and to be more specific I would love to specialize on teaching young bio medical engineering intakes on the course.
I would really love to use my training to educate others and to become a professor at a prestigious university or college to teach the next generation. Because I believe that any knowledge acquired should be shared!
Biomedical Engineering is a fusion of both healthcare and engineering. Which means engineering aspects are used to solve the problems of healthcare by designing and upgarding medical products. I am interested towards Biomechanics. This basically deals with body movements and the role is to design and makes instruments that aids towards the motion within a body. After taking the Project Management course under Dr. Simon last semester I got to know about the importance of the regulations, and process of getting FDA approval, Device Classifications and many more. So I would even like to gain some knowledge and experience under Management profession. I am really excited for this Medical Device Management and projects coming.
I already know I am not suited for academia. I was originally going to get a PhD at the University of Florida in their bio robotics lab but knew that I wouldn't be able to devote several years of my life in a single project like that. My career path since graduating with my BS in 2016 has been very windy and I'm not 100% sure what position suits me most.
The one fact I know that I want a career in medical devices. I like the fact that I can work on products that can help changes lives regardless of how small or large, or how simple or complex. My current goal is to try and become a design consultant. I like problem solving and creative thinking so that may be what suits me best. Like Scott mentioned, its difficult to become a true consultant and it will take a lot of years of experience to get to that point, so I just have to work my way there. I'm actually hoping this course will resolve what part of the industry I want to be in.
End of the day, as long as we are happy with our jobs, its all that matters, right?
I have had the opportunity to try out academic research and work on a co-op in the industry. In my second year at NJIT, I volunteered at a lab on campus studying traumatic brain injury. I was in the lab for over a year and I definitely gained a lot of skills, knowledge, and clarity that I DO NOT want to go for a career in academic research. Academic research didn't give me a sense of accomplishment because there were no tangible results. I was hoping that my time at the lab would be spent researching in order to develop a product, however, I had barely touched on the subject of concussions. From my short time on my co-op, however, I've realized a couple of things. First, the industry is definitely where I want to have my career. Secondly, I would want to be in an R&D department and work on product development. But thirdly, I also learned that in order to get far in R&D, you need to have a PhD. I still don't plan on a getting a PhD because it requires a lot of academic research and that's not fulfilling for me. I want to work on things, physical things, and I want to design them. I feel that the industry is more suited for me.
What about the rest of you? Where do you see your careers landing? Academia or industry?
Through my studies at NJIT, I never had the opportunity to work in academia, such as a performing research as a lab assistant. Regardless, I was very lucky in that a friend helped me obtain a job working as a Manufacturing Engineering Co-op at a large medical device company. So far I love the work I am doing knowing that I am helping facilitate the production of devices which are used to save people's lives. While the FDA regulations require a lot of tedious paperwork, I accept that it is a necessary evil and enjoy the other aspects of my job, from running protocols to investigating problems on the manufacturing floor. In just 6 months, I realize it is something I want to do for the foreseeable future. My BME education was mechanics centric and so I feel Industry is a better fit as oppose to academia, which I feel a lot of the research is focused on cell/tissue engineering. Within industry even, there are many options to explore in terms of all the different departments you can work in. I am excited to investigate other positions such as Research & Development and Quality Engineering.
Upon graduating, I was fortunate enough to begin my career in industry almost right away. I began working, and still currently am working, as a "Test Specialist" at a dental prosthetic company. Before working in my company, I never fully understood what it was like working as a biomedical engineer in industry. Would I work in a lab? If so, what makes me a BME and not a ChemE besides my degree? Or would I work in an office in a cubicle? It was all very abstract to me and not being able to get an internship or a co-op certainly did not help. But during my time in this company, I not only learned what it truly is like because of the position I have, but because of the position everybody else has. As a test specialist, I work with R&D to test developing products, QA and production to validate new products, and of course management to align with the entire team. I've come to see, at least from my experience, that working as a BME entails a lot of collaboration, communication, and creativity. I am more than grateful that the job I have requires interacting with nearly every single department in my company because I have the opportunity to branch out seemingly freely within the industry in the future. In addition, I feel like the unique and valuable insight I receive can better prepare me if I were to pursue a managerial position.
From all of this, I've realized something rather critical. It should not be too difficult to explore and transfer to the different departments of a typical engineering company at first. However, the more experience you receive within a single "realm", the harder it will be to continue with that freedom. Therefore, doing all that you can to gain skills and knowledge from every corner when you begin your career is more beneficial than you may think at first.
Currently, I work in the research field while I am pursuing my Master's degree at NJIT. And as much as I like my job currently, I would like to get experience in industry at some point. As far as I have determined through my time working in research, I enjoy the work on late-breaking research topics and being able to discover things. But because I have not formal experience in an industry workplace setting, I cannot be sure that working in academia is what I want to do or not for my career. So currently, my plan is to graduate with my Master's degree to help me get a job in industry, and then go from there.
No one will truly know how they feel about academia or industry until one has experience in both. Unless you are dead set on the academic or industry lifestyle, you will have to try both and decide from there. I have a lot of research experience, and while the work is fulfilling when breakthroughs are found, a lot of times the results do not agree with the hypothesis. This can be frustrating for many people who may feel like a large part of their time was spent on what they believe is no progress. The reality of research is that a lot of work does end up feeling like a dead end. But if you continue to build on previous ideas, a dead end is an opportunity to back up and find another course of action towards fulfilling objectives set by your broader research question.
Many people prefer developing devices are are already proven to work; these ideas were originally research questions that have been answered. As a result more money, private or public, is poured onto industries. The reason industry has the ability to provide deadlines on their work is because of their certainty and expectation that the products can be developed to work properly. A passionate academic researcher may be successful in their breakthroughs, but the work to generate the same results takes longer than from a R&D department at some industry. However, a more passionate researcher, regardless of academic or industrial, may not have feelings of self-doubt on their own research; otherwise they wouldn't have been able to convince donors to fund them in the first place. The message here is to ignore those feelings of self-doubt because there is always another way around the problem at hand.
During the summer I started doing research at NJIT. I realize from the professor I am working with, that Academia truly does involve a lot of grant writing, politics with other schools and organizations, and multiple research projects alongside the teaching. While I find the ability to start your own research tempting, I would like to experience working in industry to garner hands-on experience on how medical devices are developed and approved for the market. At the moment, I am interested in the R&D aspect of industry, but that may change after learning more about each department in this course.
Based on the lecture for this week, there seem to be research oriented positions in both academia and industry. So working as a research engineer may be a good way to open doors and transition from industry to academia.
In my opinion, the best way to find a job that is perfect for you is to try many types of positions to find out what you do or don't like. I thought I would love a research position, but after working in a research lab and gaining some perspective on what a research job for PhD students and post-docs and even professors entails, it became very clear that it was not what I wanted to do.
I just recently had an opportunity in industry, and though the position/company is not where I want to end up, I loved working in industry and its become very clear that it is where I want to continue. Through this course, I'm looking forward to learning more about the positions available in industry.
While still being an undergraduate student in the BS/MS program here at NJIT, I am currently working as a researcher in a lab here on campus since the start of this summer. From my experience so far, I can say that I did enjoy coming in to work everyday and working on my project, which is a wearable device. In fact, I looked forward to coming in and further progressing on the development of my project. An added benefit of working in research on campus was the flexibility in hours as I could come in and go as was convenient for me. On the contrary, I don't have any experience in the industry to say that I would prefer academia over industry. As much as I did like academia, one con was sitting and working in the same place everyday for multiple hours. Nonetheless, I think industry may be better for me because I believe the job that would fit me perfectly is one where I get to work on the development of a medical device that reaches a stage where it is marketed and sold as a finished product. As a result, I hope to gain some experience in industry through a co-op next semester, so that I can better determine the job I believe would better fit my skill sets and interests. Therefore, before graduating I hope to gain enough experience in both industry and academia to make a better career decision for my future. Furthermore, I hope that through the project in this class, I can gain a better understanding of the job role I would desire if I were to enter the industry.
I am also new in my career as a Biomedical Engineer and find myself struggling over the decision to pursue a career in academia vs industry. I resonated with the conclusion stated by kak33 to become a Research Engineer because it is somewhere sort of in the middle, hopefully the best of both worlds. I've had a passion for research, design and prototyping for the better half of my undergraduate degree and therefore had my sights set on an R&D position in industry. Turns out while pursuing my MS, I was offered a position as a Supplier Quality Engineering Intern at a large medical device manufacturing company. Even though it wasn't R&D, it was a step in the right direction as my first experience in the industry. I figured out within the first few weeks of my internship that I really did not understand the complexity of a medical device company, and the opportunities it may hold for my career.
From what I have learned in the past 8 months at my current position is to be grateful for the foundation I am gaining in Quality Assurance. The importance of Quality is distinguishable in a medical device company because of the regulations and guidelines held to standard by regulatory bodies such as the FDA, or even internationally. Although recognized as a good start, I would really like to propel my career into a different direction, still within industry, possibly somewhere in Research/ Engineering. Maybe a Development Engineer or CAD Operator and work my way up to a Project Manager. These job descriptions keen my interest, but I am also not exactly sure what they do on a day-to-day basis. I am looking forward to learning about these titles, as well as others, to try and gauge what I want to do and what direction I should be heading to get there.
Bachelor in Biochemistry and switching to BME for master is a huge step for me that am happy am doing because through my undergrad years I always loved research and the genetic engineering course I took awakened my desire to purse something related to engineering and that deals with human make up and how they are engineered and also develop a device that can help to improve most diseases.
Though new to the Medical device I can say that I do have some kind of knowledge in the professional side working as QA/QC in both food, cosmetic and Pharmaceutical industry and have seen how process engineers and project management work to develop formulas for customer and how they work on project and how i have to be the last to review, inspect, and approve as long as they meet FDA guidelines as well as the client or company involved requirements, following their Standard operating procedures.
All the process is also synonymous with BME and can be projected into the Medical device. I do love both side of It; the Academia and Industry because I want to be able to research on things that triggers my interest in my personal lab as i work on developing this. Working in the industry, which i will like to focus more on either the Regulatory affairs or the clinical Research include the QA/QC engineering aspect.
Though am still looking forward to learning more on other professional areas on both the academia and the industry so i can get the basic knowledge of it and then channel my energy into what pricks my interest
I am looking to switch careers from a secondary educator. I am earning my second masters and have been considering jobs in clinical research. Specifically I considered clinical research associate. Is this appropriate for such a transition when experience is lacking in the field? I have been teaching science for thirteen years. I am not quite the fan of beginning at the very bottom, but I also do not know what would be most appropriate.
Industry and academia can be a bit different, when considering the goals of each field. But, research holds an important role throughout any field. Sometimes both can go hand in hand if you can move forward the research and make advancements in the field. I currently work in an Industry role in pharmaceuticals. It has been a good experience so far, and I've been able to accumulate important knowledge that in turn use throughout my career. I would say both industry and academia require patience, because in the world of science everything doesn't always go as planned so you have to be able to adjust.`
