Is materials science a meme?

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>>8983324
I have a professor who has a post-doctorate degree in material sciences and engineering, real smart guy
All he does is drink and smoke in his office, also he makes a living by """""teaching""""" materials science classes at my college which consists of 10% actual class and 90% dissing other professors and going to their conferences and talking shit about their presentations
>mfw he stood up and said "I am the master of superconductors" to a peer because he disagreed with his thesis on the viability of superconductors

>>8983324
Mat Sci is pretty employable so yeah. ChemE is also pretty employable and in the same vein.

>>8983324
What kind of stuff are you hoping to do for your career? How do you see materials fitting into that?

Top 5 chem PhD dropout here, I have a couple pubs in organic materials. Went headfirst and picked shit up along the way. However, organic synthesis is extremely fucking boring and likely to die since its major founders have been among the likes of pharma and DOW, both cutting R&D to focus on profit margins, and because OChem is where most chemists graduate from.
MatSci is a much more interesting sub field, but I imagine machine learning is going to dominate the field in a couple decades given how hot that recent Duke paper was. Luckily for you ML is easy as balls to learn to a level that will impress the aging PIs and the software skills will provide job security if you can't hack it or become disillusioned.

Side note: depending on where you're aiming and your math quals you can't just hop into a masters out of your field. I should know, I'm trying to switch to more applied math stuff now and while I hit the minimum reqs for entry I'm not competitive aside from grades.

>>8983495
Funders, not founders.

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>>8983406
>I am the master of superconductors

>>8983324
>organic synthesis research
doesn't sound at all like material science, and completely like chemistry

>>8983324
>Is materials science a meme?

no.

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>>8983406
>I am the master of superconductors

>>8983495
>a few examples where such methods may be used within materials science, such as discovering simple models describing complex materials behavior, screening for superior or new materials through accelerated property predictions, and acceleration of molecular dynamics simulations
Sounds pretty sweet, actually, anon. I already want to get a solid background in PK/PD simulation/prediction, docking/receptor conformation changes, molecular dynamics, and computational organic in general, and this shouldn't be too far afield. Honestly, I'd be impressed if we could do something similar for "how does microstructure influence properties of a material" in general. If it's ML and thus something of a statistical approach, that also might shed more light on how we could bridge rigorous first principles with more nontrivial macro phenomena. Honestly, that's why I'm drawn so heavily to organic, because of the elegant, broadly predictive models for reactivity. How a formalism like electron pushing, which is so simple a high school kid can master it, is really just a stand in for the qualitative behavior of waves, how a more rigorous molecular orbital treatment (say, in Fleming) recovers and extends all its meaningful conclusions while remaining extremely basic and concise, and so on.

As for math, I've got a fair background. It'd be a matter of getting it all on paper, though. Are there other ways besides formally taking the respective courses, since I'm probably using as many of my free electives to take advanced/graduate courses in chemistry? Maybe work/publish in a pchem group, or count something as an independent study?

My eyes kinda glaze over when I hear meme words like "materials" "polymers" and "nanoparticles." Maybe that's because I haven't been exposed to the field enough, though.

>>8983324
MatSci is a pretty broad term and getting bigger. Used to just be ceramic engineering and metallurgy. Now anything with "applied" in the name is calling itself MatSci. So it's kinda a meme unless you find a university with an old-school "Mines and Metallurgy" kind of program. Then you're actually taking the stuff the miners pull out of the dirt and doing real science and engineering with it. New steels to make bigger skyscrapers, new ceramics that won us WW2. Real materials. None of this punkass "additive manufacturing"/"biomaterials"/"metamaterial" bullshit.

>>8985058
Those 3 buzzwords you listed as bullshit are mentioned so much because that id what major unis care about researching, you dipshit.

>>8984390 >>8983732 >>8983406
>I am the master of superconductors

Not a PhD.

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>>8983324
>Is materials science a meme?
Fuck no. There is much needed advancement in fibers, plastics (we need a replacement), insulators, cleaner chemical refinement processes, recycling, computer materials, building materials, it goes on and on.

We needs chemists more now than ever.

>>8983495
That's pretty depressing to hear. I'm going to be applying to grad school in the fall and am primarily interested in synthetic organic. Is there any chance of a stable career if the PhD isn't from a big enough name to land the few jobs that are left?

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>>8985058
How is additive manufacturing a meme? Especially in aerospace, companies are dumping billions into it