What can a scientist in my Star Wars RPG be working on?

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

I was asking for ideas on what a scientist could be working on in the Star Wars galaxy. However my list of can nots are more akin to what an engineer would be working on. Then I guess that’s what I really meant. So that being said I ask. What can an engineer in the Star Wars galaxy be working on?. He works for the canon New Republic.

I don't think you quite understood my post. I know that you're looking for thoughts on something a scientist could be doing in Star Wars. What I was saying in my previous post was that you could use some real-world instances as inspiration for whatever your scientist could be doing, then I gave a few examples of that. It's easy enough to apply an engineering role to those.

Other ideas could be:

• If your character is a biomedical engineer, perhaps he is trying to synthesize an alternate healing chemical to be used alongside Bacta and Kolto.
• If your character is a metallurgical or structural engineer, perhaps he is trying to create a compound that can resist up to the highest gravitational pulls (not all, but certainly able to withstand more than the hull materials of most ships), for use on ships needing to be in somewhat proximity to the black hole you mentioned in your first post.
• Or perhaps your character is an electrical or optical engineer, where he could be trying to develop sensors with the capacity to study solar radiation storms - a galactic stormchaser, if you will.

As I said before, mining real-world stuff and applying it to Star Wars is super easy, and actually lends a bit of its own realism to the galaxy.