Nanotech Industry Grows more promising with surge of software development

The University of Waterloo’s
Nanotechnology Engineering program
is beyond competitive, being the
#1 undergraduate nanotechnology
engineering program in the world. And
yet, despite being beyond competitive,
it grows more promising with the surge
of local software development jobs
available. While nanotechnology is still
not a mature field, even roughly a decade
after inception, fortunately the students
have a promising career in software
development ahead of them.

“Wow! I took these chemistry courses
in Nanotechnology engineering because
I always wanted to do full-stack web
development” says current student
Michael Gretzky. Michael Gretzky will
be doing full-stack web development for
BrainGeek in New York city full time
starting Summer 2020. Former student
Bill Winning notes “it was always a
pleasure to apply nothing in my degree
to my professional career growth and
development.”

To help students prepare for
these intensive software jobs, the
nanotechnology faculty plans to offer new
and exciting courses, like “Data Structures
and Algorithms for Nanotechnology
Engineering” (totally unrelated to the
CS “Algorithms and Data structures”).
Junior lecturer Xinfeng Littlefinger
notes diminutively “for our premium
nanotechnology engineering students,
all problems are small problems”. While
some people may have a small set of a
questions, students are assured that since
computers are at a fundamental level,
molecules, this is highly relevant to
Nanotechnology engineering.

Example job descriptions of co-ops
for Nanotech students include “front-end
software developer”, “back-end software
developer”, “embedded systems software
developer”, and “nanotechnology
engineering WEEF TA” and “student
newspaper editor in chief”.