Having Science as a subject can open up a number of unusual and interesting career options for a student. There are different disciplines of science under which you can pursue a career. These include fields that one would not associate with the traditional image of science and technology.

For instance you could be wondering what you can do with biology? Life sciences offer more than the opportunity to be either a doctor, a dentist, a health educator or a biology teacher. You could become an agricultural technician, or if you prefer animals to plants, a vet. You would also have the option of becoming a biochemist, a chiropractor, or even a genetic counselor. Definitely not typical roles and careers that you would associate with life science, are they?

Similarly you would be amazed at the diversity that being an engineer can afford. You can rest assured that the robotics expert, the civil engineer, the CAD designer, the software specialist and the mechanical engineer are not the only jobs open to you in this field. You could be an energy engineer, a landscape artist, a marine architect, a nanotechnology developer or a mapping technician.

Again none of these roles are typically associated with engineering, but you need to be one to do the job. The truth is that science is applied in practically all our vocations to some extent of the other and so some scientific experimentation can always lead to a new discipline being built on an older one.

In recent years there has been a major effort to revive STEM subjects that include science, technology, engineering and math. The lack of skilled manpower in these fields has led to encouraging the development of interest in these subjects while students are still in school.

This does not mean that your career options get limited to being a researcher, an engineer or a robotics specialist. There are any number of interesting jobs that will be open to you as a result of your mastering the STEM subjects. Some of these include jobs that may never show you the inside of a laboratory at all.

Many of these jobs are new and have just developed in the last few decades. Take for instance Climate Change Analysts. They are in great demand. Their apparent ability to use scientific principles and mathematical calculations to predict the effect of human activity on climate change is much in demand.

Another interesting career option includes becoming a Cartographer. While maps have been made since times immemorial the data that a good photogrammetrist can provide can be invaluable for the accuracy of the new generation of maps.

Maps can give us topographic, climate, and even political information so there is no chance of such a job becoming tedious or boring.  Why not make as accurate a map you can of your own neighborhood as part of your science project?

There are a number of science fair competitions for high school students at the national level. Close to 9 million students take part in science fair competitions annually. These include kids from kindergarten right up to grade 12. However it is only the grade 9 to 12 students who participate in the more serious science fair competitions.

These competitions are sponsored by leading members of the research and technology industry. Intel offers the Science Talent Search, the Conrad Foundation offers the Spirit of Innovation awards, Davidson Fellows Scholarship Program and the Siemen’s Westinghouse Competition in Math, Science and Technology is another one with serious prize money.

These competitions do not allow walk in entries. There is a lot of preparation that goes into making these the best showcase events for talent in science. So it is natural that there is a set of guidelines that needs to be met for the entries to qualify. It is once they qualify that the students get to compete in the final national level science competition.

The prizes differ from competition to competition and can vary from the finalists receiving $1000. to the winner taking a grand prize of $100,000. It is serious business indeed and if you want to win at the national level science fair competition you will need more than a good idea.

In recent times the cellphone has come under attack very often for being cancer generating, causing brain damage and stimulating growth of tumors. However that same little electronic device can also be a major life saver with the X-Finder. The telephone application was developed by 15 year old Maximilian from Germany.

The software is to be loaded on the cellphone and then can b e used to find the elderly missing by sending a special SMS to the phone. The phone will then respond with an SMS giving its exact location. This can make it easy to find a person trapped in an emergency. The X-Finder software won fourth place in the world’s largest science fair in San Jose in California.

The X-Finder has been called an electronic guardian angel by its creator, Maximilian. For an elderly gentleman who tends to forget just where he is due to Alzheimer’s disease the X-Finder could be just that. Or for a person trapped under rubble of a building after an earthquake, the device would truly prove a life saver.

A simple invention that uses another innovation as a vehicle, but what a difference it could potentially make. These are the kinds of ideas that win science fair prizes. Now think of something simple that could make a major difference and make it a reality.

One of the most fascinating and rewarding science projects has been the ongoing improvements made in organ transplantation. When a diseased organ is replaced by another human being’s organ and this procedure increases the life of the patient it is nothing short of a miracle.

The first successful organ transplantation took place in 1954 when Ronald Lee Herrick donated his kidney to his identical twin brother. The organ transplantation elongated his brother’s life by 8 years. The monozygotic twins were easily able to handle the transfer as the organ was not rejected by the body’s defence system as a foreign object.

Organ transplantation is a major surgical process which has come a long way since the first heart transplant by Dr Christiaan Barnard. In 1967 Dr Barnard transplanted the heart of a brain dead woman into a new body where it beat for 18 more days. The feat opened the flood gates and organ transplantation gradually became mainstream rather than experimental procedures.

Today the trouble is that we have the technology, but not enough organ donors. Most organs are harvested from old people who died natural deaths after 65 years. This makes the quality of the organs being transplanted poor. Accident victims who are brain dead, or suffer irreversible cardiac failure are better sources.

Often organs can not be harvested because it is unknown if the person wanted to donate them or not. The relatives of the deceased are too overwrought at the time to take the decision and good organs can get wasted. Perhaps  a science project expounding why one must become an organ donor would be a good idea to raise awareness about the issue.