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The Center has launched the nation's first Ph.D. program in nanotechnology, an undertaking designed to prepare students as leaders in a world in which scientific discovery and exploitation of nanoscale phenomena and the engineering of the very small will carry the next industrial revolution. The program puts in place a Ph.D. nanotechnology track tied closely to other science and engineering disciplines. The effort is funded by the National Science Foundation's Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (NSF-IGERT) program.
In most disciplines, education has traditionally progressed through laying a foundation and Subsequent stepwise building of pyramids of knowledge. This approach to education has resulted in a highly specialized workforce. It has promoted enhanced departmentalization in academia, each field imprinting its own way of thinking on its scholars and evolving its own languages and acronyms. The specialization has deepened the trenches between disciplines to such an extreme that publications often became incomprehensible to those outside the field. Such a divergence in science makes it difficult for one discipline to capitalize on the advances of another.
As the frontiers of many disciplines, including physical sciences, biosciences and engineering, are converging at the nanoscale, nanotechnology can only thrive from interdisciplinary cross-fertilization. The multidisciplinary fabric of nanoscale science and technology requires an intimate marriage of diverse fields, from theory to application, wherein individuals learn from each other, and varied expertise is required to solve common problems. As a result, an education system focusing on a single discipline will not provide an adequate education for success in this field. On the other hand, we believe that a standalone Ph.D. program in nanotechnology, where students can only get an overview of many disciplines but none in sufficient depth to contribute, will also not properly prepare graduate students to meet the future challenges. Therefore, we have created an Optional Ph. D. Program in Nanotechnology, providing students access to interdisciplinary research and educational expertise. Successful completion of the program leads to a Ph.D. combining a concurrent degree in Science, Engineering, or Medicine with Nanotechnology. Such innovation and integration of graduate education across department lines has changed the educational landscape at the University of Washington.