Talk:List of engineering branches

Engineering list error

Someone changed the fourth interdisciplinary option to "I Love Pies" I do not know what was there before.

Engineer

Someone needs to add Genetic ^Engineer. also mechatronic engineer —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.28.106.197 (talk) 02:52, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

• I dispute that Mechatronics is a separate and distinct form of Engineering. It is basically a form of multidisciplinary engineering, where Systems Engineering is better suited. Where does one go to get a degree in mechatronics? This sounds like a marketing ploy than real science. --71.245.164.83 (talk) 23:52, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
• I agree. Everyone wants to have every specialty splinter group added. I've refused to impose my thoughts on this, but .... Don'tKnowItAtAll (talk) 02:49, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Where does one go to get a degree in mechatronics?

The University of Western Australia is one place you could go.

Pathway A: leads to specialisations in Mechanical Engineering (including Oil and Gas) or Mechatronics Engineering

http://www.studyat.uwa.edu.au/courses/engineering-science

WikiDMc (talk) 18:21, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Automotive

I'm amazed that Automotive engineering hasn't been aded to this list. It is arguably one of the fields of engineering with which we are most in contact. LewisR (talk) 07:53, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Mining

Although some American schools (such as The Henry Krumb School of Mines at Columbia) seem to have stopped awarding mining engineering degrees, there are others, such as the Colorado School of Mines that do. Mining Engineering is not an historic relic. It is a modern discipline that is as advanced as any other field. Mining is NOT civil engineering. Civil engineers are not concerned with or trained in rock mechanics and ground control, or stope design. Mining does have sub-disciplines, such as minerals processing, mines maintenance (at some Canadian universities) etc. Also, those familiar with the origin of the term "civil" engineering, would wonder why military engineering is not on this list. If there are no objections, I would like to add mining as a current discipline of engineering (or branch for our American friends).John G Eggert (talk) 22:48, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Support. The present organization seems rather odd, petroleum engineering is listed as a specialized field and mining could be listed there also. Vsmith (talk) 02:29, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Isn't petroleum engineering a specialisation of mining? --Chris.urs-o (talk) 11:36, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Question

Why isn't Petroleum engineering and protein engineering under molecular engineering or under chemical engineering at the very least?Swmmr1928 talk 05:31, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

What about Quality Engineering? How come Quality never gets any love? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.67.133.158 (talk) 23:48, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Merge with Outline of engineering?

This article is largely redundant with Outline of engineering. 121.45.223.144 (talk) 04:47, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Software Engineering?

I'm surprised that this list doesn't include software engineering more prominently. It seems to me that (at the very least) large scale computer systems occupy a place in many modern businesses analogous to the heavy machinery of earlier eras. It also seems likely to me that software engineers are doing the same sort of thing as in more traditional engineering disciplines, in that they are taking theories (e.g. relational database models of information, mathematical models of financial market activity, etc.) and turning them into practical things that people can use. What do other people think? RomanSpa (talk) 14:18, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Software Engineering IS NOT A MAJOR BRANCH of engineering, is not even a major sub branch of any major branch. Software Engineering is a sub branch of Computer Engineering which in turn is a subset of Electronics Engineering which in turn is a major branch of Electrical Engineering. You also mention the machines (computing devices) that have taken a part in modern business as old (mechanical) industrial machinery had in the earlier industrial revolution. Well that's called Hardware Engineering that is part of electronics engineering. So the sub-sub branch of electrical engineering that seems more prominent to people these days is computer engineering not just Software engineering.

The article at present gives a prominent place to Software engineering like a "Major branch"; It should be reorganized so the classical Construction, Mechanical, Chemical, Electrical only (and dare we say even that branch of Engineering that cannot be mentioned: the one that has created economy, religions, societies, so human beings can be "managed" or "ruled, etc ... I don't even know how to call it), plus those cross-over specialities. So I would like to move Software Enginnering to Computer engineering.

181.56.131.236 (talk) 19:24, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

I think software engineering has grown into its own discipline of engineering. It is a common major in college and a common title for the job market. Suggesting it is a subsubsubsection (etc.) is kind of semantics. Ambndms (talk) 00:38, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Metallurgical Engineering is absent

I find the lack of mentioning Metallurgical engineering to be a tragedy. How can you not list the oldest profession of engineers? Metallurgy has been around for 5000+ years. Metallurgy being a subset of Alchemy makes it an ancient practice and going back to the very earliest civilizations predating almost all other sciences. The very earliest metal weapons, tools, art pieces, and coinage are a direct result of metallurgy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jg93811 (talk • contribs) 17:15, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

I added Metallurgical engineering under Materials engineering, which in turn, is already listed under Chemical engineering. H Padleckas (talk) 04:52, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Where would you cite for that or would a different term be better ? Seriously, this is a current-day article not a historical one so it's use is what matters, and 5000 years ago it was not called 'engineering' it would have been 'smith'. Seriously, I can find it but the term does not seem common as schools of engineering either do not have such or refer to this as "Materials Science and Engineering", not "Metallurgical engineering". (see http://www.admissions.ucla.edu/prospect/coll_sch.htm http://typesofengineeringdegrees.org/ http://www.top-engineering-schools.com/types-of-engineering.html versus http://www.a2zcolleges.com/Majors/) Markbassett (talk) 13:37, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

I just Googled (with Ask.com) "Metallurgical engineering" and I got 4,590,000 hits, so I conclude Metallurgical engineering is still alive as a field of study. Not every College of Engineering has a Metallurgical engineering department just like many universities/colleges do not have a college or school of engineering. Although Metallurgical engineering is one of the less common departments or curricula at Colleges of Engineering, it surely does exist in some places. In a comparable way to how some may refer to "materials engineering" as "material science", both being basically about the same thing, some may refer to "Metallurgical engineering" as "Metallurgy".

Here one can look for a job as a metallurgical engineer: jobgalore - metallurgical engineer.

Here the Time website states that a metallurgical engineering major is currently ranked as the 9th highest paid college graduate major: Time - The 20 Best- and Worst-Paid College Majors - 9. Metallurgical Engineering.

Here is the Department of Metallurgical Engineering webpage for the University of Utah: University of Utah - Department of Metallurgical Engineering.

Here the University of Alabama College of Engineering features Metallurgical and Materials Engineering: University of Alabama College of Engineering - Metallurgical and Materials Engineering.

More examples can be provided, but I think you can get the point. H Padleckas (talk) 16:45, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

H Padleckas better but still the not the more common terminology as the wiki thing is to use the predominant term and when I google with Google, the term "materials science" is by far the more common term over "metallurgical science" -- it's 7 million eight hundred thousand for "materials science" or two million seventy thousand for "materials science and engineering" versus 506 thousand for "metallurgical engineering". Would these be two different things or is the one a subset of the other ? Markbassett (talk) 13:49, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Metals are a subset of Materials; therefore, Metallurgical engineering is a subset of Materials engineering, and Metallurgical science, commonly called Metallurgy, is a subset of Materials science. As I mentioned previously, for all practical purposes, Materials engineering is basically about the same thing as Material science, and similarly Metallurgical engineering is about the same thing as Metallurgy (or Metallurgical science). Besides metals, Materials engineering or science is about concrete, brick, rock, ceramics, polymers, wood, glass, and any other materials such as composites, etc. H Padleckas (talk) 19:19, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

This webpage, http://www.matse.illinois.edu/matseillinois.html, describes that at the University of Urbana-Champaign - College of Engineering, the previous Department of Metallurgy and Mining Engineering and previous Department of Ceramic Engineering were merged into the new Department of Materials Science and Engineering. H Padleckas (talk) 19:35, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

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Copyedit

Attempting a copyedit of this highly redundant article upon request. Another editor summarily removed many of my changes with the explanation "Correct as written". I don't edit war, so I'm not going to reapply my changes. I would greatly appreciate other editors' feedback on this situation. I also note that some disciplines appear under multiple headings in the piece. An engineering expert will have to sort that out. I will suspend my efforts for now. Lfstevens (talk) 21:47, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Question

It was mentioned that software engineering is under the Interdisciplinary. In present times, software engineering has been the most preferred, so I guess it would be better if we mention why it was been included under Interdisciplinary. -NandithaMerugu (talk) 11:50, 25 May 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by NandithaMerugu (talk • contribs) 11:48, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

- Hi, I like this idea. Software engineering is not really "interdisciplinary," as it is currently listed. It's its own discipline, however, it doesn't really have any subsection disciplines (does it?). Thoughts? -Ambndms (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 00:37, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Proposition to make biomedical engineering its own section

Hello,

I think if Chemical Engineering is listed as section with biomolecular engineering, process engineering, and materials engineering listed as subsections, I think biomedical engineering certainly deserves to harbor its own entire section. Subsections are at least biomechanics, tissue engineering, medical imaging, etc.

Thoughts?

- Ambndms (talk) 00:35, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Do it. The page is a mess. Ldm1954 (talk) 21:22, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Copyedit 2024

I've finished an overhaul of the list. Per the copyedit request, I worked largely on conciseness and tone. I also tried to make the list more consistent with outline of engineering, glossary of engineering, Category:Engineering disciplines, and a search of all articles with "engineering" in their titles (more than 4,000 of them).

Following WP:Summary style, because the lead sentence tells us that engineering is about the design and analysis of solutions, we don't have to repeat that over and over. Similarly, the opening sentence of section Materials engineering tells us that it's about the properties of materials, so we don't have to repeat that in definitions on that section's table.

For list inclusion, I tried to keep it to engineering disciplines and removed specific examples of things engineers do. I got rid of the laundry lists like Manufacturing engineering which used to have such major specialties as "Musical instruments" and "Pumpjack", and Power engineering where four of five major specialties were redlinked. I did try to include the disciplines which had articles, with the exceptions of (a) non-technical/non-professional fields, (b) tiny stub articles, (c) where the discipline was emergent and overspecialized. This appeared frequently with what seemed like niche disciplines in computer software which I didn't feel worth mentioning in the scope of this article.

For organization, I feel that Biological engineering might be worth distinguishing as a sixth major branch of engineering, but I didn't go looking for a source on that. Also, I wasn't sure about grouping industry-specific fields like Agricultural engineering, Textile engineering, and Paper engineering.

Having taken a fairly thorough look at the subject, I also listed a number of articles in the expanded See also section. If anyone has a way to incorporate these into the body while keeping them separate from the fields of professional engineering, please do so.

I'll keep this watchlisted for a while if anyone has questions or comments. – Reidgreg (talk) 01:48, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Scope

@Jwrightmu: you reverted my copyedit with the edit summary Too many unwarranted changes including removal of some legitate [sic] branches of engineering - please check for valid CIP codes before removal (i.e. Applied Engineering).

I feel that my edit improved the article and could be a starting point for further improvements. Addressing a long-standing maintenance tag is one reason (though I see above that an earlier copyeditor also received pushback) and just above this another editor stated "The page is a mess" indicating room for cleanup.

To address your specific concern, I'll admit that I find the term "applied engineering" off-putting as in my way of thinking, all engineering is applied. The article Applied engineering (field) reads like a course catalog and has promotional tone. The field seems to focus on management rather than being in the realm of engineering. What I see at NCES CIP (classification of instruction programs) here and here, applied engineering covers only "basic engineering principles". Based on that, I'm leaning more toward removing it entirely.

I think this brings us to a bigger question: What should be the criteria for list inclusion? We have to be discriminating or else the list will accumulate tangental information and lose its utility.

If we are excluding things like "financial engineering" (as I feel most editors would agree we should) then educational accreditation alone should not be the benchmark – or at least we should be careful about what body is doing the accreditation. I'm leaning toward what certified/licensed/professional engineers consider to be branches of engineering. Which brings us to regulation and licensure in engineering. Licensure in the US, for example, appears to require an ABET-accredited degree (not the ATMAE which accredits applied engineering in the US).

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this. – Reidgreg (talk) 20:11, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

@Reidgreg

Hi! Thank you for all your work on this. You're bringing up a good point here. I noticed in your first edit that Biomedical Engineering is sublisted and doesn't have it's own section. (And as a biomedical engineer, I took offense to that! - Just kidding, but it did prompt me to do a bit of research on my own.)

Anyway, I checked out ABET's website (https://amspub.abet.org/aps/name-search?searchType=program&keyword=engineering) when I researched, and there are actually hundreds of engineering accreditations. Perhaps we can include the ones above a certain threshold of accredited institutions? Mechanical engineering, for example, has the most with 462.

Although, only 58 programs are software engineering-accredited. The field of software engineering may just be newly licensed or something because obviously it's quite ubiquitous. This may be the exception, though it isn't my field and there my be a distinction between software "engineering" and software "development." Just some thoughts.

Anyway, thanks again for your work. Let me know what y'all think.

- Ambndms (talk) 21:57, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Hello to both of you- thank you for your efforts on this article.

Per the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Educational Statistics (https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cipcode/cipdetail.aspx?y=56&cipid=93052):

"Title: Applied Engineering.

Definition: A program that generally prepares individuals to apply mathematical and scientific principles inherent to engineering to the management and design of systems, execution of new product designs, improvement of manufacturing processes, and the management and direction of the physical or technical functions of an organization. Includes instruction in basic engineering principles, project management, industrial processes, production and operations management, systems integration and control, quality control, and statistics."

The NCES recognizes Applied Engineering as an Engineering, General (14.01) Classification of Instruction Programs (CIP). It classified Applied Engineering field as an emerging field of study in 2020. Therefore as a 14 CIP code, it is a formally recognized branch of engineering.

Financial Engineering is not present in the formal recognition of Engineering discipline programs (CIP codes). In terms of defining fields of study, Applied Engineering is recognized by the CIP code list.

Regarding the state licensure point: Engineering Technology (CIP code 15) students are able to sit for the Professional Engineering exam in a number of U.S. States, though Engineering Technology is not included in this article as an Engineering branch. The common thread for inclusion in this list of engineering branches appears to therefore be classification as a 14.x CIP code.

I would like to see all the recognized branches of engineering represented as this would provide much more informational value to those exploring an interest in engineering. There was an older Wikipedia article on the "Main Branches of Engineering" that was merged into this one some time ago. This article identifies the main branches and then expands upon this with the intent to be inclusive. 2601:985:601:85D0:D86D:CB1C:1BE:AB83 (talk) 22:37, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

@2601:985:601:85D0:D86D:CB1C:1BE:AB83

So...should we include "forest engineering" here? I've never heard of it, and is probably beyond the scope of what most readers would expect, but it's a CIP code (https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cipcode/cipdetail.aspx?y=55&cipid=87312).

I think there should still be a secondary filter that excludes branches like this (or perhaps not excludes altogether, but denotes their relative underrepresentation). This secondary filter would probably group "Applied Engineering" with "Forest Engineering," as they're bother rather obscure/esoteric. Does that make sense?

Anyway, I'm frankly just enjoying that this page is getting noticed by editors. Cheers, team! Ambndms (talk) 22:55, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

So who would act as the secondary filter (see comments above)?

Use the 2020 14.x CIP codes recognized by NCES: https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cipcode/cipdetail.aspx?y=56&cipid=90495 and include them all as these are legitimate fields of study offered at universities. NCES requires a minimum number of existing programs in practice before an emerging field is recognized. This is done every ten years. I do not see why we would want to be selective on this article based on personal bias or experience. Jwrightmu (talk) 01:23, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

@Jwrightmu

Nice points, I agree with much of that. However, it lists at least one field in the 14.x codes that doesn't appear to be engineering ("Operations Research," https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cipcode/cipdetail.aspx?y=56&cipid=90086), at least in the sense of what one would expect when traversing this Wiki page. I don't know who makes the NCES list, but perhaps it's better to utilize an engineering source and not a broad organization that handles all subjects?

Also, NCES lists subjects like Ceramic Engineering and Paper Science Engineering, which are both only accredited by two institutions. However, it omits subjects like Food Engineering, which has more than 3x as many accredited institutions.

Still, I see your point in picking arbitrarily. Using a threshold value of "number of accredited institutions" is arbitrary, but could be decent.

Frankly, I see obvious value to using NCES as the source, too, and making any progress on this page is good. I would be happy to use it instead of ABET accreditations with a threshold value. I'm just providing another viewpoint! Ambndms (talk) 01:55, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

I am also not very familiar with Operation Research Engineering (CIP code definition does make sense, however), but with a quick Google Search I found a program at Cornell (first link): https://www.orie.cornell.edu/orie/programs/undergraduate-program

I think we are safe to use NCES as an unbiased source. BTW, I think Food engineering may be under the 1.x CIP code (Food Technology & Processing). Jwrightmu (talk) 02:10, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm going to be slow in responding, but wanted to ask (1) if we should restore the copyedit version and work from that, and (2) to prevent being too US-centric should we add as a qualifier commonality with UK, EU, and possibly Canada, Australia and New Zealand standards? – Reidgreg (talk) 02:28, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't think we should restore your former copyedit as you had deleted at least one NCES recognized branch of engineering (Applied Engineering). While I personally do not have the bandwidth to develop the suggested edits based on the 2020 NCES CIP codes and possibly other sections for non US programs, I would definitely support the effort as long as it is inclusive and based on authoritative data for non US engineering fields like NCES for the US. It is likely that this page is in its current state because of the scope of work needed to clean it up. Jwrightmu (talk) 02:54, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Touching again on the scope of the list, is it a list of engineering courses, engineering degree programs, engineering professions, or something else? There can be a lot of redundancy between instruction programs. An institution might bundle a bunch of previously offered courses together as a new instruction program, without actually adding to any field of study. – Reidgreg (talk) 14:23, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

@Reidgreg When you're asking about "the list," you're referring to the list on the website (https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cipcode/default.aspx?y=56), right?

The site self-defines itself as: "The Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) provides a taxonomic scheme that supports the accurate tracking and reporting of fields of study and program completions activity."

I see your point about redundancy. For example, it lists Engineering Mechanics and... Mechanical Engineering. (I'm in neither field, so they may actually be quite different, but it is cause for a second glance).

To the point about bandwidth above, maybe we can just update this page with things from the NCES page that we're comfortable with, then list a blurb at the bottom encompassing the leftovers. For example, I can write a lot about biomedical engineering, someone else likely about civil, etc. Then we can say, like, "and there's also Forest Engineering, etc." Perhaps we can also explicitly call out NCES in this blurb, since that's where we're sourcing the list of disciplines.

I think this would be most effective since 1) I don't think any of us has the bandwidth to comprehensively update the whole page with every discipline (although big kudos to you for already making a big first step, which I don't think should be entirely discarded), and 2) I don't think we have anyone active here in each discipline, and I am not comfortable writing on behalf of a, say, Forest Engineer. TLDR, let's not let great stand in the way of good..baby steps is better than no steps.

Thoughts on this? Ambndms (talk) 10:39, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

When I mentioned "the list", I meant this list article or stand-alone list (Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists). I wanted to know how we're going to define the subject of the list article and its inclusion criteria (WP:LISTCRITERIA). Depending on that, it might be simpler to reframe this article as a set-index article and only include engineering branches that have their own Wikipedia articles. On the other hand, it might be better to first determine general sources to be used (i.e.: high-quality RSS which list engineering branches), and follow how these sources define engineering branches. – Reidgreg (talk) 14:24, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

I strongly support only including disciplines which have their own page. Mention this up front and then remove everything that does not as otherwise this becomes unmanageable (which IMHO it already is). Ldm1954 (talk) 14:30, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

@Ldm1954 Does this list already exist somewhere? I'm rather ignorant to Wikipedia's backend, but I assume there's a list of engineering pages or something similar, so we don't have to scavenge manually? This makes intuitive sense in terms of filtering which should be included. Ambndms (talk) 15:24, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Since editing is required, I suggest just going to the list and putting [[...]] around each as a first pass. If they are red remove from the second pass. Ldm1954 (talk) 15:46, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Oh, that has already been done. Therefore remove everything red. If someone feels strongly about it then they can create a new page.

N.B., some of the pages might need a review to check for notability.

N.N.B., there are many silly entries already. For instance, why is Mechanical engineering listed as a specialty of Project engineering, that is definitely putting the cart before the horse. Ldm1954 (talk) 15:52, 9 January 2025 (UTC)