You’re an engineer. And engineering programs will continue to use engineering focused tools. The goals of engineering program projects are vastly different than other areas of academia. Developing the tool is the project for engineering.

Bioscience / environmental science programs will find micropython good enough for their needs. The tool itself is just the means to the end if real science. Micropython let’s you deploy in lower power applications without having to learn much beyond what you already know from Jupyter notebooks.

I really don’t know any PhD students or post-docs in microbiology/environmental sciences who have the time to learn embedded C or similar languages.