Nanotechnology at GATech: Nanotech Research Center?

<p>I am interested in doing research in nanotechnology as an undergraduate and am looking at Georgia Tech as a possibility, so I was wondering - I know that they have had plans for their Nanotechnology Research Center, for a while. And an old article I read said that it was expected to open in 2008. However, since I haven't heard much about it I doubt that it has.</p>

<p>I think the building is now called the Marcus Nanotechnology Research Center (although I'm not entirely sure). Does anyone know how construction on this building is going or when it is now expected to be completed?</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

<p>When I left at the semester the exterior was done but landscaping was nonexistent. My guess is it's about a semester behind schedule. Don't put too much stock in new buildings. As far as I know, most nanotech labs (including the one I work for) are staying put, though I do know some adminstration and a clean room are going into that building.</p>

<p>Tech will have a lot of undergrad research op's; About a third of undergrads do research. My lab has a few and they mostly get experience with working equipment (don't take that as we don't trust them with much, some of these machines are worth millions of dollars and there are entire semester courses dedicated to their operation!).</p>

<p>^^^
gthopeful,
which grad dept. are you in, and what's you area of research? Just curious .... :)</p>

<p>zebes</p>

<p>I'm in the ECE department. I personally do research related to looking at the suitability of new materials for electronics. Silicon just doesn't cut it for many applications (space due to cosmic ray damage, electronics with clock rates over a few GHz, etc) and is also growing increasingly scarce relative to demand.</p>

<p>If you want to read a bit more about some of the stuff Tech does in this vein, here are the links to some their lab websites:</p>

<p>[url=<a href="http://www.nanoscience.gatech.edu/zlwang/index.html%5DZhong"&gt;http://www.nanoscience.gatech.edu/zlwang/index.html]Zhong&lt;/a> Lin (ZL) Wang's Nanoscience and Nanotechnology group<a href="getting%20a%20lot%20of%20press%20recently%20for%20a%20new%20material%20that%20can%20generate%20power%20just%20by%20being%20stepped%20on">/url</a></p>

<p>[url=<a href="http://www.physics.gatech.edu/npeg/press.html%5DEpitaxial"&gt;http://www.physics.gatech.edu/npeg/press.html]Epitaxial&lt;/a> Graphene Lab<a href="works%20with%20a%20new%20carbon-based%20material%20that%20featured%20in%20MIT's%20Technology%20Review%20magazine%20as%20one%20of%20the%20top%2010%20innovations%20of%202007">/url</a></p>

<p>Oh cool. That sounds pretty interesting. I do some research myself in Physics Dept. at UCI (University of California at Irvine). I work with nanotubes (SWCNT's) on simple FETs. Right now I'm working on analyzing AFM feedback from tubes to efficiently determine semi-conducting/metallic nature.</p>

<p>Do you think GT will give undergrads like myself similar opportunities? My professor (MIT grad) at UCI is very generous and quite a nice guy, and its lucky that I found him and his group (fairly small 5 grads, 6 people in lab including me) because he has given me many opportunities to augment my learning and get real hand's on experience.</p>

<p>
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Do you think GT will give undergrads like myself similar opportunities?

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<p>I don't want to say 100% yes because I'm not involved in UROp's, but I can say that there is a demand for all students interested in nanotech-related research at the moment because of a series of rather large grants various groups have received. I think most labs would love to have an undergrad with experience fulfilling the roles you do currently with this professor at UCI because it frees up the grad students for other things and it allows more data to be analyzed. There is almost always more data taken than manpower to analyze it, and there's definitely more experiments to do than people to do them.</p>