Briefs (10/12/06)

Pitt to offer new nanoscale course

Jennifer Hoffman, For The Pitt News

The… Pitt to offer new nanoscale course

Jennifer Hoffman, For The Pitt News

The National Science Foundation recently awarded Pitt a two-year, $200,000 Nanotechnology Undergraduate Education grant to develop a multidisciplinary course on nanoscale science and engineering.

The award is one of only 10 such grants in America and the first to be awarded to Pitt.

Minhee Yun, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, will be designing and teaching the course along with co-principal investigator Alexander Star, assistant professor of chemistry, and Noreen Garman, professor of education and the project’s curriculum consultant.

Both Yun and Star are researchers for Pitt’s new Gertrude E. and John M. Petersen Institute of NanoScience and Engineering.

“First of all, this is the first time a multidisciplinary course [in nanotechnology] is available at the University of Pittsburgh,” Yun said. “And we just recently opened the nanotechnology institute, so this is the right time to bring nanotechnology courses to undergraduates.”

Nanotechnology is a burgeoning field concerned with the application of nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes, nanoparticles and nanowires in environmental, biomedical and defensive issues.

The course is scheduled to begin in the fall of 2007. Yun said he is “expecting students from everywhere — science, engineering, medicine — that is our goal.”

Students of sophomore standing and above who completed general chemistry and physics courses will be eligible to enroll. They will be divided into six or seven research teams of four to six students each, of which one team will be chosen to participate in a paid summer research stipend, Yun said.

Garman hopes that interest in the course will build.

“We’re hoping that there’s going to be good sustainability in this course…a long shelf life,” she said.