What is a Research Engineer?
Start with your garden-variety Backyard Inventor. Begin from a young age to cultivate spatial reasoning and mechanical skills. Not only should the candidate take his toys apart on Christmas morning, he must also put them back together again, with improvements. Now add 12 years of rigorous secondary, tertiary and post-tertiary Science education in all the areas that a practical inventor might need: English, Welding, Calculus, Economics, Physics and many more. Then, finish with more than 20 years’ experience in industry, for-profit, and Academic research enterprises. Now you have a Research Engineer, like me.
What is Engineering Research?
The Pure Sciences seek to expand basic Human understanding of the natural world. Physics is the study of matter, energy and fundamental processes of the universe; Chemistry, the study of the elements and their compounds; Biology, the study of life; Mathematics, the study of pure reason, numbers and logic. These are all more-or-less naturally-occurring systems under study.
In contrast to this, Applied Science is the effort to find practical applications for the outcomes of Pure Science. As a form of Applied Science, Engineering Research is the study and understanding of man-made systems, materials and technology.
An Engineer knows how thick the steel must be to comply with building codes and ensure a bridge is safe. A Research Engineer knows, on a structural, materials, molecular and even atomic level, as well as from a mathematical and systems perspective, why this is so. This is essential in circumstances which have never been tried before and for which there are no “recipes” to follow.
The bridge analogy extends to all kinds of technologies. If you are building something that humans have a lot of experience with, you might employ an engineer. But if you are trailblazing into new territory, you might need a Research Engineer, a specialist in how to create new commercially relevant knowledge.