This Pan-American Advanced Studies Institutes (PASI) award, jointly supported by the NSF and Department of Energy (DOE), will take place in San Jose, Costa Rica in June 2006 on the topics of tools and techniques in nanoscience. Organized by Dr. Michael J. Betenbaugh and Dr. Stergios J. Papadakis of the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, the institute will focus on two main areas: chemical techniques to create nanometer-scale materials and self assemble them into larger devices and structures, and the basic operating principles of the sophisticated tools used to characterize these nanomaterials. Lectures on the topics of DNA self assembly, metallic and semiconducting template electrodeposited nanowire growth and self-assembly, and controlled assembly of colloidal particles will be included, together with hands-on demonstrations.
This institute intends to foster collaborations throughout the Americas and to promote scientific research in Central and Latin America. The topics will provide a genuine educational experience for the participating graduate students and post-doctoral researchers, while the opportunity to meet and interact socially with a large number of researchers from various fields will broaden the horizons of the participants as well as foster productive research collaborations. Dissemination will be accomplished via a website that will describe the goals of the PASI and publicize it beforehand, will be used to accept applications for the institute and describe the topics that the lecturers will cover, and will be updated frequently to disseminate results from the PASI afterwards. All of the lecturers' presentations will be made available on the website for easy access by participants when they return to their home institutions
