Food Scientist Jobs
If you’ve thought about science as your field, you may have considered or even completed training for food scientist jobs. These are the jobs in which you use your knowledge to ensure the abundance and safety of our and the world’s food supply. For example, you may need to find a safe way to minimize pests that can destroy crops or you may need to find ways to conserve water without jeopardizing the growth potential of crops. If you are a food scientist, you’ll probably need to come up with ways to improve the storage and analysis of food. As well, you may need to suggest ways of reducing the risks of contamination of our food supply or may have to assist in tracking down the source of outbreaks, such as E. coli or salmonella.
If you want to ''get your hands dirty'' in these jobs, a bachelor’s degree in food science or in a related science field can be sufficient. If you want to do research, you’ll need to go to the top of the educational ladder and even begin your career as a professor before you’ll be able to lead research programs.
Your best options for employment are going to be with the government or with an educational organization if you don’t want to find yourself working directly for a food company. The starting salary for food scientist jobs in 2007 averaged almost $38,000.
Medical Scientist Jobs
One of the jobs expected to grow quite rapidly in the coming years is that of the medical scientist. In this field, your job is mainly to study human diseases with the overall goal of improving human health. This can be a challenge as new diseases are emerging in parts of the world and more bacterial strains are becoming resistant to conventional treatments. With the risks of biological terrorism, medical scientists are often called upon to be proactive in coming up with ways to protect the human population from wide-scale devastation. Even developing effective flu shots every year can fall in the laps of these professionals.
Medical scientists are in hot demand in a number of fields. On the biotechnology front, these scientists are asked to help create and test new drugs that could help control the spread of diseases. Other scientists study the genetics of disease to find ways of identifying people with the greatest chances of developing problems. Still others focus on epidemiology and work either in hospitals or in research facilities to learn as much about certain diseases as possible.
To secure most of these positions, you must be a licensed physician. For others, you need only have a Ph. D. in biology. The annual salary for this profession was between $56,000 and $62,000.
Material Scientist Jobs
Because many material scientist jobs were based in manufacturing, these jobs are expected to be ones with slow growth potential. That doesn’t mean there won’t be some available positions thanks to retirement or to new openings but competition will be increased. The basic idea of material scientist jobs is to use knowledge of chemistry to develop new materials or to analyze existing materials. For example, the creation of synthetic rubber would not be possible without material scientists who experiment with the combination of chemicals and materials in order to obtain results with desired properties. When not making new materials, you might be in the process of finding ways to make existing materials better.
Having a bachelor’s degree in chemistry is often enough to secure you one of these positions. With the field being competitive, however, you may want to pursue higher degrees in order to give yourself an advantage. Taking an internship or working in a lab where material scientists are doing their job would be a good idea as well. That way you could gain some valuable experience which will come in handy when you begin competing for positions. Today, only about 40% of material scientists work in the manufacturing industry and that number will probably decline by 2016. You would find more job opportunities in the areas of biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. The government also employs chemists in a number of fields as well.
For new graduates with a chemistry degree, the starting salary in 2007 was $42,000. Government employed chemists earned an average of $90,000 per year while most material scientists earned about $62,000 a year.
