Inside Look: Course Work 2007

As part of the nanobiotechnology graduate programs at INBT several new courses were created. The following gives a description and overview of work created by students for two of the courses.

Interfaces Phenomena & Nano-structured Materials

Looking at the adhesive capabilities of geckos for the "interfaces" course.

The Interfaces course, which is a prerequisite for IGERT students, gives an overview of colloid and surface science. Topics include surface and interfacial tension and surface energies, (definitions and methods of measurement), interactions at solid-liquid interfaces, thermodynamics of fluid interfaces, hydrodynamics of interfacial systems, including Marangoni flows, and applications of colloid and surface science in the chemical industry.

The following presentations which can be downloaded in Microsoft PowerPoint format were given by participating students during the 2007 spring course offering.

Journal Club

A second new course and prerequisite for IGERT and NBMed students is the Tutorial and Journal Club meetings. During these meetings students teach each other fundamentals in engineering, physics, and biology.

Over the course of three one hour meetings a team of students cover a particular topic related to nanobiotechnology. They identify and distribute book chapters, notes, and papers from relevant literature on the topic. Attending students read, discuss, and digest the material in the first two one hour meetings. During the third meeting a power point presentation / lecture is presented in which the selected students summarize important aspects of their topic. These final presentations are open to IGERT, INBT and HHMI related faculty.

Four presentations have been given so far which are now available for download in Microsoft PowerPoint version.