This Nanotechnology Undergraduate Education (NUE) in Engineering program entitled NUE: Development of the NanoEngineering Minor Option (NEMO) at the University of Houston (UH), under the direction of Dr. Dmitri Litvinov, will introduce nanoscale science, engineering, and technology through a variety of interdisciplinary approaches into undergraduate education. The proposed program will integrate and expand the existing nanotechnology courses into a comprehensive nanoengineering program. The impact and associated outcomes of this program is in training engineers who will be prepared for the challenges of the emerging nannotechnology job sector.
Nano Engineering Minor Option (NEMO) program for undergraduate students in the College of Engineering of the University of Houston is the integration and expansion of the existing nanotechnology courses into a comprehensive nanoengineering curriculum. The interdepartmental program that involves the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, and the Department of Mechanical Engineering, is designed to reach out to a much larger group of undergraduate students in a coordinated manner than the efforts of individual faculty members allow. The team spearheading the program development has taken advantage of the synergies between the existing undergraduate education infrastructure and the state-of-the-art nanotechnology research programs at the College of Engineering. The program offers comprehensive instruction in nanoengineering, designed as a structured undergraduate curriculum available to students across several engineering disciplines. The fifteen (15) credit-hour NEMO curriculum includes three 3-credit-hour lecture courses, three 1-credit-hour laboratory courses, and a 3-credit-hour guided research course. Significantly, all courses are designed to be cross-disciplinary such that any qualified engineering student, regardless of his or her major, can enroll in the program and succeed. Furthermore, the program outreach and its success has resulted in the establishment of a sister program at the University of Texas at Brownsville (UTB).
