A career in CFD
 

I am a student in a 5 year course to a Master of Technology and I'm about to choose the area of study for my last two years. Basically my choice is between studying hydrodyanmics and CFD or an approach to control engineering. I have a question concerning the CFD part and I would really appreciate to get some input from somebody around here too.

So, here goes: I have a keen interest in programming and would like to choose a area of study that potentially leads to a job which can involve quite a bit of programming. By that I mean actually writing source code, not just using a pre-made program in some way. Do you think a career in CFD will give me good opportunities to do programming as a part of my job?

CFD is a big and tough subject. Compared with other major, such as EE, CS or control engineering, I would suggest checking the pain-and-gain ratio for CFD before making the decision.

Good question. If you are interested in design CFD is a good choice. It is growing very fast in the industries.
I have experience as a consultant both for CFD and FEM: a good CFD analyst is more difficult to find on the market and has more opportunities.
An expert CFD analyst with advanced skill of programming is rare.
I have used knowledges in this fields (advanced programming, FEM, CFD for FSI and shape optimisation) for very interesting industrial applications starting with on demand UDFs for fluent (for Fluid Structure Interaction problems). And now I'm a partner of ANSYS with an add on for Fluent RBF Morph (http://www.rbf-morph.com/).

Good luck!

Marco

If you can blend knowledge of engineering and physics with the ability to program (and do both well) you should have opportunities in the CFD or CAE field.