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Rachel Kamish is a materials engineer for a car manufac-
turer. She specializes in resins, which are chemical compounds
used to make plastics. Plastics are a common material used in
car manufacturing. Many interior car parts, such as door panels,
are made from plastic. Material engineers like Kamish develop
plastics that are sturdy, help reduce noise, and are lightweight.
Kamish also works on resins that are used for plastics in bumpers
and in parts of the engine itself. Kamish describes her work this
way: “Be prepared to be a ‘jack-of-all-trades.’ You have to worry
about material properties as well as whether the process to make
the resin is going to work. You need to be well-organized and a
good people person because you have to interact with a broad
range of coworkers.”
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Transportation Engineers
Transportation engineers are another common type of civil engi-
neer. They work on projects involving the safe and efficient move-
ment of people and goods. They help design highways, railroads,
tunnels, bridges, airports, and other transportation projects. The
design and construction of large-scale transportation projects are
among the most important and most expensive challenges facing
transportation engineers. “Unless you have transportation, you
don’t have much,” says transportation engineer Kumares Sinha,
who is also a Purdue University engineering professor. “Transpor-
tation is the backbone of economies.”
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To do their job, transportation engineers study traffic patterns
and develop solutions to overcrowded highways. They redesign
airport runways to make them better able to handle increasingly
larger commercial jets and increases in airplane arrivals and de-
partures. Transportation engineers also work with city planners on
sidewalks, crosswalks, and bike paths to help people move from
one place to another without motorized vehicles. The transporta-
tion engineering firm Fehr & Peers, which is based in Washington,
DC, works with communities that are dedicated to improving their
networks of bicycle paths and lanes. In California’s Contra Costa
County, for example, Fehr & Peers performed what are known as
complete street studies and made recommendations to county
