Nick Bostrom's Simulation Argument details the most obvious probabilistic implications of substrate independence in consciousness: http://www.simulation-argument.com/
The most blatantly obvious indicator that consciousness is substrate-independent: We are DNA-based life forms. DNA stores information. It's program code stored in molecules. You are the product of the code of your parents. If for some bizarre reason we find out that we HAVE to use DNA to create other conscious systems, we will still have the ability to do exactly that. Not "machine" in the sense of being composed of metal, but certainly "machine" in the sense of not being the immediate product of natural selection.
David Chalmers' work should be particularly relevant to you, and you will find him at the Singularity Summit this year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chalmers
Even if you don't live to see machine consciousness as a reality, the only other pursuits that might compare are anti-aging and intelligence enhancement research. If you're not going to create something that can figure out how to give you an indefinite self-contiguous narrative, you have to support its creation or face certain death.
I'm guessing you already have your CS undergrad or will have it soon, and you're interested in AI, so that seems the natural choice. I'd say you're overdecided if that's what you want to study.