forget MEL - look at Python. Python is extremely powerful in Maya and you can do a lot with it, depending on your pipeline / task. If you want to go into that direction you can investigate script based scene assembly systems, how scripts can help with modular environment workflows or with baking maps and exporting.
If you want to look at lighting/shading research into physically based materials, next gen seems to be all about them atm. Python is great, making a pretty nice tool and then writing about how it would help environment artists workflow would be awesome. Personally i would look into the materials and into the new lighting…