What is the difference between an Environmental Scientist versus an Environmental Engineer?

Question from Maggie:

My name is Maggie and I am a prospective College student. My mentor had emailed you and suggested that I get in touch with you as well. I am interested in Environmental Engineering and was hoping you could give me a bit more insight into what that encompasses and how it would differ from an Environmental Science major.

I also checked out your Nerd Girls website. Who knew a Nerd Girls website could distract me for an hour? It is so cool and I think the
work you and others have done is extremely impressive. Thank you so much for your time!
A proud nerd,
Maggie

Answered by Dr K on February 03, 2012:

Hi Maggie! I think it is great that you have someone mentoring you. I would have answered your email even if you are not a prospective engineering
student. I just want all young women to go for their dreams regardless of their major! Anything “engineering” is about finding innovative solutions to problems
to help people or the environment. Environmental science tries to understand the environment and investigate cause-effect relationships.
Now, engineering does this too, but the entire goal is to develop new methods, approaches or technology that solves some issue or helps
scientists make new discoveries.Let me give you an example. Did you know that NASA used to use the space shuttle missions to “observe the earth” The
missions were called Earth observing systems and they found out some very interesting things. One of them
found that fish in Australia were getting Cancer and that this was where the ozone layer was the most depleted. They made the discovery, but how
did they measure this and figure it out? Engineering! The imaging technology and the visualization technology took monstrous
amounts of numerical data and transformed it into pictures and scientists can now use these images (instead of
the tons of numbers) to quickly see trends and make connections. They also found water supplies in the deserts too, using this technology to
help people affected with droughts.Another mission examined the effect of “burning” (Forrest fires, industrial burning etc) and pollutants in the atmosphere.

I would like to introduce you to one of our official Nerd Girls, Michie who is in Environmental Engineering at Colombia! She can
definitely tell you more about her experiences. She is working on weather warning systems for places like Haiti and using renewable energy to power the low-cost devices.
If you say it’s ok, I’ll send her your email so she can write to you.
Thanks for your question and keep us posted on what major you decide on!

Comments