(NHI Nanoblog) Rice University’s summer undergraduate nanotechnology research program will be able to expand with the help of a grant from the National Science Foundation, the school announced Tuesday.
NanoJapan, which draws applicants from across the United States, sends 16 science and engineering students to Japan for 12 weeks. After a three-week crash course in nanotechnology, students fan out to labs at universities and government agencies. The program targets students in their first two years of college, to offer them a taste of what doing real research is like.
The NSF’s Partnerships for International Research and Education, known as PIRE, helped with the initial funding for NanoJapan, which began in 2005. Now the agency has offered another $4 million to keep the program going another five years, according to a Rice press release.
Junichiro Kono, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and chemistry and astronomy at Rice, founded the NanoJapan program. In the release, he said the new grant money will help the program expand beyond nanotechnology and into terahertz science, a growing field that complements some aspects of nano research.