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Many of the students I trained in the field of safety engineering in the United States work in top companies such as Apple, Google, and Tesla. Don’t underestimate safety engineering.
Safety Engineering Study Abroad — Our Times
Students who are familiar with safety engineering know that there are many branches to choose from in the safety major, such as mining, petroleum, construction, fire, electrical, occupational diseases, and even separate safety management and ergonomics. These branches come from the classifications provided by various universities, and everyone's understanding of the names of these subjects also comes from the introductions of university admissions offices. I believe that students who plan to study in the United States have more or less checked safety-related majors, or asked agents about this major (well, sorry, you may have been recommended to engineering management or environmental health and safety), and the answer is: almost nothing. Why is this?
Introduction
We have always heard that developed countries have very developed safety disciplines and that companies do a particularly good job with safety, but why can't we find the major of safety engineering? The reason is that in the United States, they distribute safety under various disciplines. For example, petroleum safety is a small branch of the petroleum major. It may not be called petroleum safety, but may be called "petroleum engineering" or other more beautiful names. Then, in the department, there are 10 professors, and one or two of them are doing safety-related research. So, when looking for a major, don't think about where to find the words "safety engineering", but look at what people do specifically, and then evaluate whether to apply. In the United States, there is a branch of safety engineering, which is systematic. It is the safety of human-machine/human factors engineering. Now cheer up and read the following content. After reading it, your understanding of the safety major may be raised to a higher level:
1. Electric vehicles, autonomous driving, etc. have brought a new era of driving. Safety engineering majors can do the following directions: Intelligent driving occasionally fails, such as Tesla's autonomous driving, which often requires human takeover. If the driver is distracted, sleepy, or emotionally out of control at this moment, the car needs to automatically identify and predict the consequences; it is necessary to design alarms (visual, auditory, and tactile, such as AR or seat vibration) to allow people to quickly perceive; it is necessary to design the position, size, and interface of the in-car screen to improve the user experience; it is necessary to study how to make users trust the system without over-trusting the system during autonomous driving; it is necessary to study the reasonable geographical location and layout of charging stations, such as how to get users to go to the stations you want to go to (with rest areas vs. simply sitting in the car and browsing the phone) to optimize resource allocation. All of these require "perfect" human-computer interaction design. In this design, safety engineering research is needed.
- Companies that can be employed in this field: Tesla, Google's Waymo autonomous driving; Huawei's human factors laboratory; Xiaopeng, Weilai, BYD and other car companies' human factors departments, etc.
2. In the health field, safety engineering majors can do the direction. For example, in the operating room, doctors and nurses are under extreme pressure, performance, error rate, who goes and how to measure; how to use eye movement, heartbeat, etc. to predict these pressures and consequences; and how to use the theory of safety system engineering to achieve zero errors in surgery, etc. For example, if doctors often maintain a certain posture, will they have occupational diseases? How to analyze the force? If you are doing human-computer research, you can capture these movements, simulate them in the computer, and then analyze the data to find ways to improve them. For example, in the future, VR and artificial intelligence will be used to let doctors operate while standing, and the head-mounted device can display the countertop he wants to operate in real time.
- Companies that can be employed in this field: Apple, especially their health equipment department; top robotic surgery company - Intuitive; top pharmaceutical company - Merck
3. Smart home, whole house intelligence. For example, the layout of sofas, desks and chairs, the color of the walls, the brightness of the lights, the height of the washbasin, the placement of cups, etc. There is also voice recognition and the design of various interactive interfaces to improve people's experience and safety (especially important for elderly people living alone). These require human-computer interaction design to improve life experience and work efficiency, and involve safety engineering expertise.
- Companies that can be employed in this field: For example, Google, Apple, Xiaomi, Huawei's user research department or smart wearable device department, etc.
4. Traditional corporate safety engineering. For example, how to arrange the schedule reasonably in the factory to make employees efficient and safe, how to make everyone voluntarily comply with safety regulations, etc., and design training courses for employees; in the new era, how to use code and artificial intelligence to digitally model human behavior and performance - human performance modeling involved in the field of safety engineering can help.
- Companies that can be employed in this field: such as traditional manufacturing-related companies, Cummins, DuPont, Honda, etc.
5. Elderly people, children, disabled people, etc. who benefit greatly from the development of science and technology. How to make sufficiently general products requires safety engineering professionals. For example, a famous example is that a blind person successfully ran a marathon with a vibrating wearable device. Another example is two elderly people of the same age of 75, one is very healthy, has a flexible mind, and is convenient for legs and feet; the other may have greatly degraded vision and hearing. Research on individual differences caused by daily behavioral factors, and how to design different technology products to help individuals who need help more by understanding these differences, is a research that people in this field can do.
- Companies that can be employed in this field: such as Meta, Microsoft, Google, Apple's user research department.
6. Aerospace field. You didn't dare to think about it before, right? In fact, the Shenzhou spacecraft has always paid attention to the design of various human-computer interaction interfaces with the concepts of human factors and safety. Chen Shanguan, deputy chief designer of China's manned space program and academician of the International Academy of Astronautics, is also the director of the National Key Laboratory of Human Factors Engineering and the leader of my country's human factors engineering discipline. Human factors and safety are always intertwined. Safety engineering is a branch of human-computer/factors engineering, and human-computer/factors engineering is a branch of safety engineering.
- Companies that can be employed in this field: such as NASA's human-computer department.
7. User experience design in mobile apps. The location, size, color, and design of various buttons, and what is the theoretical basis; similarly, how to do user testing for a product - these fields involving human-computer interaction (HCI), user experience (UX), etc. are actually in the category of human-computer engineering. Previously, some students worked in Tencent in China, and then came here to study for a master's degree in related majors.
You may ask, it sounds like this major may require strong coding skills. In fact, there is no need to worry too much here. In this field, people from all backgrounds can find a place. Because the author is a PhD student in a related major at Purdue University, I will use my fellow students from Purdue as an example: PhD, Master, and undergraduate students are good at coding, design, engineering design, and psychology, and they can all make a name for themselves in their favorite fields. Last time I went to the relevant department at Google, I found that some of the former students were responsible for design, some were responsible for user experiments, and some were responsible for data analysis. As long as you learn well, you will find your place.
Salary
At present, the employment rate of safety majors in China is not bad, but the treatment is generally average. The reason is very simple, because safety cannot directly create GDP, and the boss cannot see how much money the safety staff has saved for the company and how many hidden dangers have been reduced. Therefore, students who graduate from safety engineering will be more or less frustrated in the company. If you study for a domestic graduate school, you may be able to do some scientific research somewhere, and the treatment will be slightly better. If you go directly to a safety consulting agency, then you have to memorize more content. In the United States, the above majors basically start at $100,000. There is another track not mentioned above, which is the scientific research path. If you study for a doctorate in this major, the school will provide a full scholarship (free tuition + $2,000 monthly salary) during the doctoral study, and you can go directly to the university to teach after graduation (annual salary starting from 100,000). After 6 years, you can basically be evaluated for a tenured position (iron rice bowl). If a professor returns to China to introduce overseas talents, you can check the relevant treatment, which is very attractive.
So, the title of this article is "Study Abroad in Safety Engineering - Our Times". Because this is the era of safety practitioners. We no longer have to endure dust on construction sites every day, and we can also work for high-end technology companies! So, if you chose safety engineering as your undergraduate major and have the idea of studying abroad + your parents' support, then try to go abroad! HJ Education will provide you with the most comprehensive service (Silicon Valley education company - cooperating professors directly provide application consulting services).