Area of EE with most growth?

[ECEdesign]

I was talking with my math professor and he brought up an interesting point of looking to find what the areas of EE that are growing the fastest and in the most demand.  Since I'm pretty early in my EE degree in college I thought people here might have some insight from industry.  Another point that I found interesting and in some cases I'm sure to be true is that professors are not always in tune with the industry.  Research and grants sometimes gets the best of them.

It sounds like embedded systems is a growing area with car technology using FPGAs for parallel processing.  I am not too keen on doing programming however.  If I have to program, I can but its definitely not as enjoyable as making something physical.

RF is moving towards software defined radios, antennas seem like an area that is here to stay.  Phased array antennas using MEMS to control the direction can be used with SDR radios. 

Semiconductors and data storage are areas that I find pretty cool but apparently these areas are seeing a decline with the slow in Moore's Law.  I think it's a really interesting time since some real invention needs to be done now.  A PhD would be required for this kind of work.

I am sure there are plenty of other areas including power which I believe is doing pretty well?

Anyway I think it would be cool to hear what people in the industry have to say about where they think the future of EEs are going.

[fivefish]

maybe something related to healthcare... that's growing and will continue to grow as people get old.
Maybe electro-bio-mechanics to help people with physical disabilities, arthiritis and the like (old-age diseases), mobility problems,
or for soldiers going to war (force multiplication, so called "iron man" suits)
maybe embedded electronics, hearing aid, eyesight, pacemakers, automatic insulin management/injection for diabetics, heart problems
Internet of Things (IOT), everything connected, mesh networks
miniaturization (everything getting smaller)
ultra low power (everything getting powered by even smaller batteries, and users want 1001 features and more than 24 hr battery life for their small devices)
maybe auto-regenerative power, no more need for re-charging (kinda like those automatic wrist watches that don't need rewinding)
security, encryption
autonomous systems, and human assisted machine learning, AI
renewable energy, solar efficiency is still very poor, battery efficiencies are still poor

[kfnight]

In the past HW security has taken a backseat to speed, size, and power considerations but with the looming IoT "evolution" it´ll become a bigger player, especially low-power HW security.

[GK]

Electronic engineering has been generally declining at a slow and steady rate for years now. Jobs in electrical engineering, on the other hand, have been increasing at a healthy rate and are projected to continue to do so in the foreseeable future.
 
Yes:



No:

[tggzzz]

You should also look at how quickly the areas in demand change, and how long it takes to move to such an area. The economists' hog cycle (aka pig cycle) is relevant here.

There is a career choice you might like to consider: become a "jack of all trades and master of none" or "a world expert in X". Either are valid, with differing advantages and disadvantages.

[ECEdesign]

Electronic engineering has been generally declining at a slow and steady rate for years now. Jobs in electrical engineering, on the other hand, have been increasing at a healthy rate and are projected to continue to do so in the foreseeable future.
 

Yeah power engineering just seems like it would be boring compared to electronics and also pretty dangerous.  Energy storage and batteries would be a cool area though.

[free_electron]

power conversion , stationary storage, photovoltaics ... electric cars is a booming industry. Faraday future is going to build their fab ...

[tggzzz]

What is "PS" and "PE"? The other acronyms I can guess, probably correctly.

[ECEdesign]

I was planning on doing the FE (fundamentals engineering) and PE (Professional Engineer) exam.  I think it might just be in the US though.  Grad school is also an option if I'm not totally burnt out on school by then...

I think of photovoltaics (PV) and battery stationary storage being a chemistry problem not really EE.  I almost decided to get a degree in Chemistry to work on those problems.  Dr. Sadoway at MIT has some cool battery designs for grid storage that consist of 2 liquid metals and a molten salt.  Of course Li-ion is the buzzword today for cars and the Tesla "powerwall"  The thing is that Li-ion battery production is not sustainable and is too costly. 

Interesting that you have found power to not be a big area in demand and others do.  It likely depends on location.

[free_electron]

PV and Battery storage requires massive power converters. tons of electronics in there

[calexanian]

+1 for a broad based understanding of power supply switching technology. I see a multi source energy grid becoming more important in the future with vastly distributed sources of varying voltages and capacities. Switching electronics will be critical and few people are competent to design high quality reliable efficient circuits. 

[brabus]

Aerospace.

Nowadays, it's extremely difficult to find skilled designers willing to put their hands in that domain.

Even I avoided being sucked in that business, but hey, the chance is still open!

[retrolefty]

I feel trying to guess at best industry to go into, one really needs to know as much specific as possible the positions you will be applying for. Some even EE jobs are very dead-ended with only management positions to move up. Conversely a position at some small shop/business might require that their EE position learn all phases that can benefit the company.

 So lets talk job specific goals, not industry goals.
 

[tggzzz]

+1 for a broad based understanding of power supply switching technology. I see a multi source energy grid becoming more important in the future with vastly distributed sources of varying voltages and capacities. Switching electronics will be critical and few people are competent to design high quality reliable efficient circuits.

... and how many are needed to satisfy the industry demands? It may be that there are more openings for people specifying and/or installing systems than for the core designers.

Personally I would power supply switching technology" as too narrow an objective for an education, although maybe not for employment afterwards.

[aiq25]

For my undergrad I didn't focus just on one category, I took a broad range of classes from microelectronics, DSP, circuit design, embedded systems, etc... Personally I think this type of experience is good to have so you understand different types of jobs and fields.

For my graduate studies I primarily focused on vehicle electronics. I'm at a point where I'm beginning to think where I want to be later in my career. Right now I'm thinking I would like to go towards hardware design engineering and/or power electronics engineering. I'm currently in the automotive industry in the US and it's a growing industry with a need for diverse set of engineers.

I always wanted to go more in depth as an embedded software engineer but I don't know if I could do programming as the primary focus of my job.