NNIN Education Site

Nanotechnology Education at Stanford NNIN Site

The Stanford Nanofabrication Facility (SNF) has several education programs and partnerships whose goals are to develop new ways of bringing students and nanoresearchers together,  to encourage students to pursue careers in nanoscience, and to promote science literacy.

REU Program – SNF is a participant in the NNIN Research Experience for Undergraduates Program. Each summer, SNF provides 5-7 undergraduates from across the country with 10-week summer mentored research internships. In addition to the network activities, SNF REU students attend events sponsored by other summer programs on campus such as the Center on Polymer Interfaces and Macromolecular Assemblies’ (CPIMA) Graduate School Workshop and Career Day.

Community Day – SNF is a participant in Stanford University’s annual Community Day. As part of Stanford’s effort to educate the surrounding communities about what is happening on the campus, SNF staff exhibit displays and demos about the facility and NNIN.  Included is an activity in which kids put on cleanroom suits and get their names and photos printed on SNF “Junior Nanoscientist” certificates, as well as a “Look into the NanoWorld” microsocope activity. In addition, a window tour of SNF is conducted.

Nanoscience High School Teacher Professinal Development – SNF is collaborating with the Mid-continent Research for Education on Learning (McREL) and Georgia Tech on  the “NanoTeach” professional development project.  Funded by a five year NSF grant, and following the successfull NanoLeap curriculum development program (http.//www.mcrel.org/NanoLeap), the program will develop workshops to teach high school science teachers about nanotechnology, as well as techniques to incorporate nanoscience concepts into their curriculum. The workshops will be pilot and field tested by a large number of teachers from across the country (recruited through NNIN sites) and will be extensively evaluated by Aspen Associates.  

Remote Access Development and Activities - Working with NNIN staff at Georgia Tech and other NNIN sites, SNF is developing NNIN remote access tools for workshop and classroom instruction and outreach. Continuing our work with remote access in classroom instruction in the NanoLeap program (http://snf.stanford.edu/Education/Nanoleap.RA.html ), we are extending this to our NanoTeach professional development program.  Included in this are remote access tours of NNIN cleanrooms (using mobile high-speed, high-resolution webcameras), and interactive demonstrations of nanotube synthesis and research direct from our laboratories.

Mass Media - SNF is assisting Ruth Carrenza, producer of the widely distributed and very popular “Silicon Run” film series, in producing a series of films on MEMS, Nanoscience, and Nanotechnology.

For a virtual tour of the SNF cleanroom visit:
http://snf.stanford.edu/Education/VirtualTour.html

For further information: http://snf.stanford.edu/Education/Overview.html