i’ve recently learned about nanotech and have been reading about it a little bit. being a high school student with one month left of my junior year it’s now time to start looking for college possibilities. well here goes: what are the different careers in nanotech?..what are the best colleges to attend if i want to study nanotech?..what types of majors/degrees are offered in nanotech?
please keep in mind that i am not the perfect student (i have a 3.5 gpa and a 26 act score, taking the sat on saturday) so please don’t tell me something like “hey man, you should go to m.i.t.”…becuase obviously that’s not really a great possibility
Also if anyone who reads this does have a job in nanotech could you tell me about it?..what you do, how you like it, etc…
Hmm… the major current and near future uses of nanotech seem to be in Biotech and materials engineering.
Our university has a specially designed Bachelor of nanotech but, unfortunately, it seems we are half a world away. I dont know if there are any special nanotech degrees in the US but any engineering or hard science degree should give you the neccesary grounding.
Well, my school actually claims to be paving the way for both nan and biotech related industries. I’m currently a biomedical engineering major myself, and it’s not so bad. They also just started buildong this past summer a biotechnology building, which will be built in the next year or two. I got to ROI, as my profile suggests. A little far from Kansas City, but it is a good school. (By good I mean education wise. There are many complaints that “RPI Sucks,” but that all depends on what you do while you’re here.) One note though: Very few women. I don’t know if you’re male or female, but I’ll out it like this:
if you’re male:
nab the first girl you like you think you have a chanve with. If you don’t. someone else will too quick for you to notice.
If female:
Be prepared to get hit on…a lot…even if you never ave been before, because you will be such a precious commodity.
Biotech is obviously mainly centered around medicine/biology but computing is also a really integral part of it these days. Um, do you actually know what you want to do or are you just chasing the latest buzzword in case there is $$$ at the end? Trust me, the second option is NOT what you want to do with your life.
Two completely different worlds. Some nanotechnology applications are useful in biotechnology, but they are not, under any circumstances, interchangeable. Indeed, I have been doing biotech for a living for over a decade and never had to learn any sort of nanotech engineering. It’s all wet chemistry, greenhouse work, dose response testing, etc.
Biotech, even though idiots in marketing have put “-tech” on the end, is still much more “bio-” than anything else. You can’t just plunk down a “-tech” engineer and expect him to be able to do anything more than get in everybody’s way.
Nanotechnology falls under the category of materials. You want to look at degrees in chemistry for this. There is some wisdom in shalmanese description of nanotech as a buzzword. Just about any university will claim to be making strides in nanotechnology because that is what brings the funding in. If you are interested in nanotechnology, start with chemistry. You will then have 4 years of undergraduate school to decide what aspect of nanotechnology you are interested in. Except in a special topics course, you are unlikely to get much in the way of instruction on nanotechnology as an undergrad.
On the other hand, undergraduate school, wherever you go, is what you make of it. If during your 3rd year in college, you still have an itch to work in nanotechnology, find the right professor and beg to work for him. Chances are, he is short of lab workers and you will get hired on the spot.
Go through the chemistry (physics if your mad) department website of any school your looking at and find a professor working on nanotechnology.
Some schools do have a separate materials department. In that case, look there as well but don’t overlook chemistry. If you go into a materials department you are stuck in materials, but with chemistry you still have a wide range of options.