Research? Fundamental research? Not much of that done these days, and probably not by people with an undergraduate degree only. Even PhD's have a difficult

Research? Fundamental research? Not much of that done these days, and probably not by people with an undergraduate degree only. Even PhD's have a difficult time finding research jobs. Research is mostly done in universities. The great far horizon industrial research labs (Bell Labs, IBM Research, and so forth) either do not exist any more or have been redirected to short-term development support. Graduate school is a good next step. Either continuing study of a hard science or moving to computer science with an eye of working at the boundary of computer science and real science.