Nanotech in U.S.: Find more molecule geeks soon or lose out
My first column is up over at Always On, and you can rate it on a scale from “Way Off” to “On the $”. Excerpts: “So there’s a big international race on to see which country will lead the Nanotechnology Revolution. How will the U.S. do?…you can have lots of venture capital looking to invest in nanotech, but if you don’t have enough technical talent you’ll still lose out. And that’s the direction the U.S. is heading now…take a look at the list of post-doc and grad students in the top U.S. academic nanotech labs today. Often, most of these young people are from outside the country. Sometimes, all of them are from outside the country. Of course, in many ways this is wonderful…Given all this, where can the U.S find the large numbers of molecule geeks it needs to remain a leader in nanotech? (And I use the term geek in the nicest way here.) We need lots, so we should try lots of ways to get them.”
July 15th, 2005 at 9:35 AM
I need some advice. How can I get into nanotechnology research? I received my DrPH in nutrition with an emphasis in nutritional epidemiology in 2003. Presently I’m working on a NCI funded study on cancer epidemiology among Adventists in the US. Before I switched to public health, I did cornea research at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio and Houston (about 10 years ago). I want to do some basic science research again, but wondering if it’s too late for me. If it’s not too late, what mechanism should I follow to re-enter the field?
July 15th, 2005 at 10:11 AM
Karen — It’s time to network. Consider attending this conference, which has nanotech-and-cancer talks, and get advice from those doing the work: http://www.healthtech.com/2005/bms/dload.asp. There will also be health-related nanotech attendees at the Foresight Conference this fall:
http://foresight.org/conference2005/index.html.
Hope this gets you started.
–Christine
July 18th, 2005 at 7:25 AM
I’ll give some input towards this from a college undergraduate’s point of view.
I am very interested in trying to study in nanotechnology, but the programs for it just are not out there, especially at an undergraduate level. There are (as far as I know) absolutely no lines of coursework that are specifically designed to train an undergrad for nanotech study, and very few for graduate studies.
In addition to that, depending on the school, it can sometimes be very hard to modify the coursework in an existing provided major to make it more targetted towards nano research. If you attend a technology institute that doesn’t have any kind of nano degree, it could be difficult to find a degree flexible enough to allow you to take courses in multiple fields (i.e. mechanical engineering, chemistry (or chemical engineering), molecular biology, and physics). If you attend a liberals arts college and study in a technical field, then often your electives are taken up by liberal arts requirements such as foreign language and history, leaving fewer course hours for nano-oriented classes.
There are also no financial incentives. College is expensive, and scholarships provide incentive to study in certain fields, especially with college students who have to help pay for their education. Not to mention the fact that (and I have plenty of experience with this), most college students have a tough time deciding what field they actually want to settle on. Financial assistance to students with possible interest in nano would certainly help sway more undergrads towards nano research. (I certainly wouldn’t mind the money!)
If there already are scholarships for undergrads looking to pursue nano, then they need to be more out in the open. This is easier said than done, however. It’s easy to find most major-specific scholarships – all you have to do is look for a bulletin board in that major’s department building on campus. But until there are set undergraduate degrees for studying nano, there will be no nano “departments,” and there will be no real direct way to even let students know about scholarships for nano study.
I’d love to go to grad school and study nano at MIT or Caltech (both of which you mention in your article), but I have neither the support for the coursework I want, nor the money needed to go to such a high-end (and out-of-state) college. I would not be surprised if there are other students out there who meet the same obstacles, and get turned away from studying nano because of them.
I agree with your article, but from a college undergraduate’s point of view, it just doesn’t pay off to want to study nano in our schools right now. If we need more “molecule geeks,” then corporations and schools need to give students a reason to become them.
July 18th, 2005 at 9:08 AM
I learned about electronics, computers and digital technology as a teenager in the 1970s by following the footsteps of dedicated amateurs who believed “learning” meant “doing”: Lancaster’s TTL Cookbook and TI’s TTL databook let me build computers, music synthesizers and other stuff. Scientific’s American’s Amateur Scientist’s detailed “howto’s” taught me about lasers. At MIT, I learned about VLSI from Mead and Conway’s Cookbook approach. Software Programming was similar. Is there a site where I can direct my high school aged children (and other newbies) that describes how they can actually try stuff out? I know Knight at MIT is working on this (http://del.icio.us/paseman/SyntheticBiology). How’s it coming and are there other similar efforts?
Thanks!