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The Howard Hughes Medical Institute provides a huge amount of science and health care related funding. HHMI is expanding existing relationships to fund postdoc scientist fellows at with Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund, the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, and the Life Sciences Research Foundation. The funding should support 32 additional postdoc scientists. HHMI Expands Support of Postdoctoral Scientists
Related: Genomics Course For College Freshman Supported by HHMI at 12 Universities - $60 Million in Grants for Universities - Howard Hughes Medical Institute Takes Big Open Access Step - posts on science and engineering funding
How To Become A Software Engineer/Programmer
1) Know that you love software before you commit to it. You’ll know when you take your first pseudocode class: a clear division forms between the people who get it and the people who don’t. If you’re in the “don’t” section, choose another career.
2) If you don’t like teaching yourself new things, the skills you learn today will be irrelevant in less than a decade. Accept the commitment to learn throughout your career as a coder, or accept your eventual fate as a has-been.
3) College degrees matter less than hands-on knowledge and time spent at the keyboard. I outpaced my entire class in college because I bought my own programming books that deviated from the coursework, and as a result I learned things they were not teaching in school.
…
5) Early on, decide if you want to focus on application development or software engineering. Application development deals with making user interfaces, interfacing different systems together, solving business process problems, and exposing applications to the outside world (i.e. web services and other remoting techniques). Software engineering deals with creation of utilities and processes that support information processing, tends to be more math intensive, requires a lower-level understanding of the trade, and rarely deals with the systems that expose the software to an end user. There are core differences in these two disciplines and 100 shades in between, so figure out what you like.
Good blog post; those thinking of a career in software development should read the whole thing. By the way if you are a programmer already that loves it and looking for a new position: my work is hiring a Ruby on Rails developer.
Related: Joy in Work, Software Development - The Software Developer Labor Market - A Career in Computer Programming - The Manager FAQ - IT Talent Shortage, or Management Failure?
I, John Hunter, work for the American Society for Engineering Education as an Information Technology Program Manager. My work on this blog is not associated with ASEE and the opinions I express are mine and not those of ASEE. That said, we are looking for a Ruby on Rails developer at ASEE, in Washington DC.
class Employee < ActiveRecord::Base
acts_as_programmer
has_many :talents
has_and_belongs_to_many :computer_languages
after_create :schedule_interview
validates_inclusion_of :salary,
:in => 60000..80000,
:message => “should be between $60k and $80k a year”
validates_inclusion_of :years_of_experience,
:in => 2..7,
:message => “should be between 2 and 7 years”
validates_presence_of :resume
validates_interest_in :ruby_on_rails
validates_interest_in :agile software development
REQUIRED_LANGUAGES = ["Ruby","Perl","Python","JavaScript","Lisp"]
def validate
errors.add_to_base(”You must know one of the languages”) unless
(computer_languages.map{|x| x.name} & REQUIRED_LANGUAGES).size > 0
end
def schedule_interview
self.interviewer = Interviewer.create(
:name => “Keith Mounts”,
:url => “www.asee.org/about/contactASEE.cfm“,
)
save
end
def hire
vacation_days = 15
telecommuting_days_per_week = 0..2
office_location = “dupont circle metro stop, washington, dc”
environment = “friendly”
company = “american society for engineering education”
save
end
end
class ApplyController < ApplicationController
def index
@employee = Employee.new
end
def apply
@employee = Employee.new
if @employee.update_attributes(params[:employee])
flash[:notice] = "Thanks for applying! I'll get back to you very soon!"
redirect_to :action => “thanks”
else
render :action => “index”
end
end
end
Modified from job announcement created by Sean Stickle when he was at ASEE. Related: Ruby on Rails Job Opportunity
The barriers between countries, related to jobs, are decreasing. Jobs are more international today than 20 years ago and that trend will continue. People are going to move to different countries to do jobs (especially in science, engineering and advanced technology). The USA has a good market on those jobs (for many reasons). But there is nothing that requires those jobs to be in the USA.
The biggest impact of the USA turning away great scientists and engineers will be that they go to work outside the USA and increase the speed at which the USA loses its place as the leading location for science, engineering and technology work. This is no longer the 1960’s. Back then those turned away by the USA had trouble finding work elsewhere that could compete with the work done in the USA. If the USA wants to isolate ourselves (with 5% of the population) from a fairly open global science and engineering job market, other countries will step in (they already are trying, realizing what a huge economic benefit doing so provides).
Those other countries will be able to put together great centers of science and engineering innovation. Those areas will create great companies that create great jobs. I can understand wanting this to be 1960, but wanting it doesn’t make it happen.
You could go even further and shut off science and engineering students access to USA universities (which are the best in the world). That would put a crimp in plans for a very short while. Soon many professors would move to foreign schools. The foreign schools would need those professors, and offer a great deal of pay. And those professors would need jobs as their schools laid off professors as students disappeared. Granted the best schools and best professors could stay in the USA, but plenty of very good ones would leave.
I just don’t think the idea of closing off the companies in the USA from using foreign workers will work. We are lucky now that, for several reasons, it is still easiest to move people from Germany, India, Korea, Mexico and Brazil all to the USA to work on advanced technology projects. The advantage today however, is much much smaller than it was 30 years ago. Today just moving all those people to some other location, say Singapore, England, Canada or China will work pretty well (and 5 years from now will work much better in whatever locations start to emerge as the leading alternative sites). Making the alternative of setting up centers of excellence outside the USA more appealing is not a good strategy for those in the USA wanting science, engineering and computer programming jobs. We should instead do what we can to encourage more companies in the USA that are centralizing technology excellence in the USA.
Comment on Reddit discussion.
Related: Science and Engineering in Global Economics - Global technology job economy - Countries Should Encourage Immigration of Technology Workers - The Software Developer Labor Market - What Graduates Should Know About an IT Career - Relative Engineering Economic Positions - China’s Technology Savvy Leadership - Education, Entrepreneurship and Immigration - The Future is Engineering - Global Technology Leadership
With the economy today you don’t hear much of a desperate need for programmers. But Dr. Norman Matloff, Department of Computer Science, University of California at Davis, testimony to Congress (Presented April 21, 1998; updated December 9, 2002) on Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage is full of lots of interesting information (for current and past job markets).
No, it’s false and dishonest… The industry has been using this “temporary need” stall tactic for years, ever since the H-1B law was enacted in 1990. In the early- and mid-1990s, for example, the industry kept saying that H-1Bs wouldn’t be needed after the laid-off defense programmers and engineers were retrained, but never carried out its promise. It hired those laid off in low-level jobs such as technician (which is all the retraining programs prepared them for), and hired H-1Bs for the programming and engineering work.
Unlike Dr. Matloff, and many readers of this blog, I am actually not a big opponent of H-1B visas. I believe we benefit more by allowing tech savy workers to work in the USA than we lose. I understand people fear jobs are being taken away, but I don’t believe it. I believe one of the reasons we maintain such a strong programming position is due to encouraging people to come to the USA to program.
I also do believe, there are abuses, under the current law, of companies playing games to say no-one can be found in the USA with the proper skills. And I believe those apposed to H-1B visas make reasonable arguments and this testimony is a good presentation of those arguments.
Very true.
Suppose you are currently using programming language X, but you see that X is beginning to go out of fashion, and a new language (or OS or platform, etc.) Y is just beginning to come on the scene. The term “just beginning” is crucial here; it means that Y is so new that there almost no one has work experience in it yet. At that point you should ask your current employer to assign you to a project which uses Y, and let you learn Y on the job. If your employer is not willing to do this, or does not have a project using Y, then find another employer who uses both X and Y, and thus who will be willing to hire you on the basis of your experience with X alone, since very few people have experience with Y yet.
Good advice.
Related: IT Talent Shortage, or Management Failure? - Preparing Computer Science Students for Jobs - Engineering Graduates Again in Great Shape (May 2008) - What Graduates Should Know About an IT Career - posts related to computer programming
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Google Summer of Code is a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects. Google funds the program with $4,500 for each student (and pays the mentor organization $500). Google works with several open source, free software, and technology-related groups to identify and fund projects over a three month period.
Since its inception in 2005, the program has provided opportunities for nearly 2500 students, from nearly 100 countries. Through Google Summer of Code, accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor or mentors from the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios and the opportunity for employment in areas related to their academic pursuits. In turn, the participating projects are able to more easily identify and bring in new developers. Best of all, more source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all.
Google funded approximately 400 student projects in 2005, 600 in 2006, 900 in 2007 and 1125 in 2008 and will be funding approximately 1,000 student projects in 2009.
Applying for the program is only allowed from March 23rd through April 3rd. Still a short period of time but in previous years they have only taken them for one week. Organizations hosting students include: Creative Commons, MySQL, Debian, The Electronic Frontier Foundation/The Tor Project, haskell.org, Grameen Foundation USA, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Ruby on Rails, Wikimedia Foundation and WordPress. See the full list of organizations and link to descriptions of the projects each organization offers.
See the externs.com internship directory (another curiouscat.com ltd. site) for more opportunities including those in science and engineering.
Related: Google Summer of Code Projects 2008 - posts on fellowships and scholarships - Larry Page on How to Change the World - comic on programmers - Interview of Steve Wozniak
These lists are basically silly but here is one sites opinion on the best occupations. I don’t really accept the methodology used as providing anything very meaningful about the “best jobs” but at least the spell it out. Best jobs
Their criteria really value being able to sit at a desk and not having to do physical work. High salary and limited stress are also significant factors.
Related: The Economic Benefits of Math - Who Killed the Software Engineer? - Knowledge Is Power - Teaching Math - The IT Job Market in the UK
Science Friday is a great National Public Radio show. The week was a great show covering Antimicrobial Copper, Top Jobs for Math and Science, Human-Driven Evolution, Methane On Mars, Fish with Mercury and more. This show, in particular did a great job of showing the scientific inquiry process in action.
Very interesting stuff, listen for more details. A part of what happens is those individuals that chose to focus on reproducing early (instead of investing in growing larger, to reproduce later) are those that are favored (they gain advantage) by the conditions of human activity. I am amazed how quickly the scientists says the changes in populations are taking place.
And Methane On Mars is another potentially amazing discovery. While it is far from providing proof of live on Mars it is possibly evidence of life on Mars. Which would then be looked back on as one of the most important scientific discoveries ever. And in any even the podcast is a great overview of scientists in action.
Martian Methane Reveals the Red Planet is not a Dead Planet
The Mars Methane Mystery: Aliens At Last?
Related: Mars Rover Continues Exploration - Copper Doorknobs and Faucets Kill 95% of Superbugs - Viruses and What is Life - posts on evolution - Science and Engineering Link Directory
Externs.com, another curiouscat.com site, provides links to hundreds of internship opportunities. We highlight some science and engineering internships and plenty of other options too. Visit the internship directory site to find options like the Yellowstone Youth Conservation Corps. The YCC was established to accomplish needed conservation work on public lands and to develop an understanding and appreciation of participating youth in our nation’s natural, historical, and cultural heritage.
The Yellowstone YCC is a program that emphasizes work ethics, environmental awareness and recreational activities. Approximately 30 students are selected each summer from across the country and are expected to complete forty hours of work each week.
In the past, YCC enrollees have been instrumental in building backcountry bridges; trail construction and maintenance; log cabin restoration; painting; and working on a wide variety of resource management, maintenance, and research projects. Many of the projects take place in remote locations within Yellowstone and work crews may be camped out for up to ten days.
Along with the work projects, enrollees spend significant time participating in YCC environmental education and recreation programs. Many of these activities are scheduled in the evenings and on weekends. They include hiking, rafting, fishing, backpacking, ranger led programs, guest speakers, enrollee and staff presentations, and trips throughout the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
To be selected you must be at least 15 and not turn 19 before the term ends in mid August.
via: Send Your Kid to Yellowstone National Park This Summer
Related: Swarm of Yellowstone Quakes Baffles Scientists - posts on internships - Light-harvesting Bacterium Discovered in Yellowstone - Who Should Profit from Yellowstone’s Microbes
Pasco high school students to work as interns in engineering
By the time graduation rolls around, students will have had three six-week apprenticeships and received industry certifications in computer-assisted design and other applications. They also will be ready to go to work or enroll in a university program. Even those who go to work still would attend college at least two days a week.
Related: Engineering Internship Openings - Summer Jobs for Smart Young Minds - Toyota Cultivating Engineering Talent - Internships Increasingly Popular - careers in science and engineering
I started maintaining a list of Congressmen with PhDs and graduate degrees in science, engineering and math awhile back.
Please comment with any additions that you know of.
The following were re-elected:
Vernon Ehlers, Michigan, physics PhD; Rush Holt, New Jersey, physics PhD; John Olver, Massachusetts, chemistry PhD; Brian Baird, Washington, psychology PhD; Bill Foster, Illinois, physics PhD.
Other scientists, engineers and mathematicians that were reelected include: Ron Paul, Texas, biology BS, MD; Jerry McNerney, California, mathematics PhD; Dan Lipinski, Illinois, mechanical engineering BS, engineering-economic systems MS; Todd Akin, Mississippi, management engineering BS;Cliff Stearns, Florida, electrical engineering BS; Louise Slaughter, New York, microbiology BS; Joe Barton, Texas, industrial engineering BS, Pete Stark, California, engineering BS, Mike Honda, California.
Lost: Nancy Boyda, Kansas (BS chemistry).
Newly elected: Bill Cassidy, Louisiana (BS Biochemistry, MD); Pete Olson, Texas (BA computer science); Kurt Schrader, Oregon (Doctor of Veterinary Medicine); Martin Heinrich, New Mexico (BS engineering), Gregg Harper, Mississippi (BS chemistry), Joseph Cao, Mississippi (BA physics); Brett Guthrie, Virginia (BS mathematical economics); Erik Paulsen, Minnesota, mathematics BA; Parker Griffith, Alabama (BS chemistry, MD); Cynthia Lummis, Wyoming (BS animal science and biology).
Before you leap to the conclusion that scientists are taking over Congress, remember 2 things: 1) I have probably been missing plenty that were in congress already and 2) this is still a total of less than 10% with even a BS in science, math or engineering. I attempted to determine the status of all those newly elected this year.
Please comment, if you know of others in Congress with science and engineering backgrounds. If we get this list to be relative close to accurate then we can start tracking the total representation in congress and see if it is increasing, decreasing or randomly fluctuating over time.
Related: Scientists and Engineers in Congress - China’s Technology Savvy Leadership - Science and Engineering in Politics - The A to Z Guide to Political Interference in Science
Fun blog by Linds, a geophysicist, with fun name and tagline: PhD = Pretty huge Dork There’s no crying in grad school! I enjoy including some posts on scientists at work (and plan on trying to intentionally do more of that). The photo shows her office onboard ship - pretty impressive. I thought this monitor was cool.
Those snippets are from various posts on the blog. Another from earlier:
Related: Giant Star Fish and More in Antarctica - Beloit College: Girls and Women in Science - A Career in Computer Programming - Diversity in Science and Engineering - So, You Want to be an Astrophysicist? - Dr. Tara Smith
Interesting chart from “Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham showing median salaries for various university employees: grad students $17,784; Tenured professors ~$90,000; Football coaches: $1,057,305.
Related: Ninja Professors - S&P 500 CEOs are Engineering Graduates (and they make even more than football coaches) - High Pay for Engineering Graduates (July 2007) - Open Access Legislation 25 provosts from top universities
Mentors prepare women for construction career
The school recently established its Advancing Women in Construction program, a key part of which is a mentorship project. More than 70 women – and several men – in the construction industry in the greater Phoenix area have signed on to mentor female students and provide them an inside look at life in the industry.
…
plan to increase female enrollment from less than 15 percent of total enrollment to 30 percent – or about 200 female students – within five years.
Cavitt says her favorite things about the school’s construction management program are the opportunities to learn beyond the classroom, such as internships and building-project competitions between construction students at other universities. She expects the mentoring program to add significantly to the value of her college education. “I’m excited to learn about the real-world business of construction from women who have been successful at it for many years,” she says.
photo: School of Construction student Heather Cavitt (front) will gain from the experience of Crystal Slawson (center), president of Phoenix Pipelines and Natalie Palmer, the company’s project coordinator, through the school’s Advancing Women in Construction mentorship program.
Related: Beloit College: Girls and Women in Science - Women Choosing Other Fields Over Engineering and Math - Women Working in Science - Fixing Engineering’s Gender Gap
Toyota has a knack for cultivating engineering talent
Toyota established a two-year internship program for recent engineering graduates at schools like the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Lawrence Technological University and the University of Wisconsin. At the end of the two-year period, the automaker and the employee reach a mutual decision about whether the employee should continue working there.
Bruce Brownlee, senior executive administrator for external affairs for the Toyota Planning Center at the Toyota Technical Center, has said the company generated a “large pipeline” for engineering talent by leveraging the internship program.
Related: Engineering Internships - Toyota Engineering Development Process - Toyota Robots - Toyota k-12 Science Grants - Toyota Production System (TPS) management blog posts
The annual ranking of research Universities are available from Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University. The methodology values publications and faculty awards which provides a better ranking of research (rather than teaching). Results from the 2008 rankings of Top 500 Universities worldwide, country representation of the top schools:
| location | Top 100 | % of World Population |
% of World GDP | % of top 500 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| USA | 54 | 4.6% | 27.2% | 31.6% |
| United Kingdom | 11 | 0.9 | 4.9 | 8.3 |
| Germany | 6 | 1.3 | 6.0 | 8.0 |
| Japan | 4 | 2.0 | 9.0 | 6.2 |
| Canada | 4 | 0.5 | 2.6 | 4.2 |
| Sweden | 4 | 0.1 | 0.8 | 2.2 |
| France | 3 | 0.8 | 4.6 | 4.6 |
| Switzerland | 3 | 0.1 | 0.8 | 1.6 |
| Australia | 3 | 0.3 | 1.6 | 3.0 |
| Netherlands | 2 | 0.2 | 1.4 | 2.4 |
| Denmark | 2 | 0.1 | 0.6 | 0.8 |
| Finland | 1 | 0.1 | 0.4 | 1.2 |
| Norway | 1 | 0.1 | 0.7 | 0.8 |
| Israel | 1 | 0.1 | 0.3 | 1.2 |
| Russia | 1 | 2.2 | 2.0 | 0.4 |
| China | 20.5 | 6.6 | 6.0 | |
| India | 17.0 | 1.9 | 0.4 |
There is little change in most of the data from last year, which I think is a good sign, it wouldn’t make much sense to have radical shifts over a year in these rankings. Japan lost 2 schools in the top 100, France lost 1. Denmark (Aarhus University) and Australia (University of Sydney) gained 1. Last year there was a tie so there were 101 schools in the top 100.
The most dramatic data I noticed is China’s number of top 500 schools went from 14 to 30, which made me a bit skeptical of what caused that quick change. Looking more closely last year they reported the China top 500 totals as (China 14, China-Taiwan 6 and China-Hong Kong 5). That still gives them an impressive gain of 5 schools.
Singapore has 1 in the 102-151 range. Taiwan has 1 ranked in the 152-200 range, as do Mexico, Korea and Brazil. China has 9 in the 201-302 range (including 3 in Hong Kong). India has 2 in the 303-401 range.
University of Wisconsin - Madison is 17th again 
My father taught there while I grew up.
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