# What education is the best foundation for a career in nanotechnology? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 25, 2004, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-education-is-the-best-foundation-for-a-career-in-nanotechnology/236330 "2004-03-25T12:18:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Wikstead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/edb3f5/32.png) [@Wikstead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wikstead)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-education-is-the-best-foundation-for-a-career-in-nanotechnology/236330/1 "2004-03-25T12:18:21Z")
What education is the best foundation for a career in nanotechnology? What I want to know is basically summed upp by that sentence. ---
**Author:** ![mad\_spoon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/fbc32d/32.png) [@mad\_spoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mad_spoon)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-education-is-the-best-foundation-for-a-career-in-nanotechnology/236330/2 "2004-03-25T12:54:27Z")
Em, id say an electrical or electronic engineer, or chemistry, or maybe physics degrees. Nanotechnology is a big field, it depends on what you want to use it to do. ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-education-is-the-best-foundation-for-a-career-in-nanotechnology/236330/3 "2004-03-25T13:37:51Z")
Physics or electronic engineering would be your choice of degree. The more maths you do beforehand (and during), the easier you will find the practical applications of those maths. ---
**Author:** ![JHW](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b38774/32.png) [@JHW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JHW)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-education-is-the-best-foundation-for-a-career-in-nanotechnology/236330/4 "2004-03-25T14:42:27Z")
Chemist checking in here. At my school there is a large and well-funded nanotechnology institute comprised of lots of profs from different departments. Materials Science and Chemical Engineering are the two departments which “supply” the majority of the professors affiliated with the institute. There are some electrical and mechanical engineers as well, in addition to chemists and maybe one or two physicists. Nanotechnology is a very broad field but I would say that a materials science or chemical engineering (as it is broadly defined in many schools these days) education would provide the best background. ---
**Author:** ![Jon\_the\_Geek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bbce88/32.png) [@Jon\_the\_Geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jon_the_Geek)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-education-is-the-best-foundation-for-a-career-in-nanotechnology/236330/5 "2004-03-25T14:45:18Z")
Biochemistry or molecular biology is also a good start, since it’s likely that a lot of nanotech will be based on biotech (cells have already figured out how to make molecular motors, there’s no need to reinvent the flagellum 🙂 ). From the University of Texas’s Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology’s “Introduction to Molecular Nanotechnology” at [http://biotech.icmb.utexas.edu/pages/science/nano.html:](http://biotech.icmb.utexas.edu/pages/science/nano.html:) > [@](#): > > Nanotechnology strives to use biological, physical, chemical, and computational techniques already in existence to build things with atomic precision. Any of those fields would probably be a good start. I don’t know of any undergraduate nanotech programs, so the best idea would be to get a degree in one of the fields that applies to nanotech, then find someone doing graduate research in nanotech. ---
**Author:** ![vasyachkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/c5a1d2/32.png) [@vasyachkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vasyachkin)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-education-is-the-best-foundation-for-a-career-in-nanotechnology/236330/6 "2004-03-25T15:13:36Z")
well i took two courses in Nano, though i didn’t do shit in there. anyway the course name started with PH ( for Physics ), but there was quite a bit of electronics and chemistry in there. and a vomitous amount of math. nanotechnology mostly deals with silicone and electrons/holes. electronics also deals with this. but then the crystallography aspect of silicone, such as - how can you etch it, thats more of a chemistry issue. and if you make mechanical structures out of it, and study their resonances then its physics … start with a lot of math, you can’t go wrong there. ---
**Author:** ![kellner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c2a13f/32.png) [@kellner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kellner)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-education-is-the-best-foundation-for-a-career-in-nanotechnology/236330/7 "2004-03-25T15:19:22Z")
> [@Jon the Geek](#): > > I don’t know of any undergraduate nanotech programs, […] We have one. Actually it is still using the “German” degree system, so it’s undergraduate/graduate combined. You can enter right after Highschool, get your “Diplom” (switch to B.Sc./M.Sc. planned), up to your your PhD and more. It’s called _Nano- and Microstructural Engineering_ ([list](http://www.uni-saarland.de/en/studium/studienangebot/) of courses , rest mostly German.) ---
**Author:** ![dal\_timgar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a88e57/32.png) [@dal\_timgar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dal_timgar)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-education-is-the-best-foundation-for-a-career-in-nanotechnology/236330/8 "2004-03-25T23:11:21Z")
Nanotechnology is a big field, Now that is a funny statement. I’m not sure I even believe in nanotechnology. It is a nice word people are throwing around. But I suggest: TEACH YOURSELF ELECTRICITY AND ELECTRONICS by Stan Gibilisco THE ART OF ELECTRONICS by Horowitz and Hill How much does an EE degree cost at a “good” school? You can get an oscilloscope from Leasametric, digital multimeter, used computer and have better stuff than EE students had 20 years ago. The transistors still work the same way. EE and ME are physics. To me the engineering schools spend too much time on math and not enough hands on. These books can keep you from getting bored even if you’re going for the degree. Dal Timgar > [@Wikstead](#): > > What education is the best foundation for a career in nanotechnology? > > What I want to know is basically summed upp by that sentence.