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Univ. of Washington Announces First Nanotech Ph.D.
Scott Brauer writes: "The University of Washington's Center for Nanotechnology has announced that the UW will be host to the first nanotech degree program in the U.S. An article in The Daily, the campus newspaper, mentions here that the Ph.D. offered is an 'option program' within a group of other programs, meaning that 'students will earn simulatneous degrees in both nanotechnology and in one of nine other departments.' The program is estimated to have 20 to 40 students per year, including this year, as soon as the Board of Regents makes its expected vote of approval. Another article can be found here."
What good will it do to hang your nano-tech diploma on the wall, it will be too small for anyone to read.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
UW will be host to the first nanotech degree program in the US.
What a sleazy grab for headlines. Unless one works in an advanced IBM lab or the like, such a degree isn't worth the paper it's printed on. No one is currently in a position to "teach" nano-tech. It's like teaching warp-drive at this point. Okay, so I exaggerate. Not by much.
1Alpha7
Live to be Moderated
...you receive a diploma with REALLY tiny writing!
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The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
it had to be said it may as well have been me. The whole point of nanotech is that where we are now there are not alot of good uses. Take a look at the book (if you have not already) to see where stuff like this can take us. This *will* be very good.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Why are degrees being given out in fields that don't truly exist yet? This seems akin to the Wright Brother's having had degrees in aeronautical engineering.
Intolerant people should be shot.
Is this going to lead to true nanonites? I could use an extra arm...
How Jaded Are You?
A Ph.D. in nanotech...
Still not as cool as a BA in Magic. (Awarded to Isaac Bonewits by the Universit of California, Berkley)
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Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
Well, looks like my advanced studies plan just finalised. ;)
I can just picture my thesis: "The Gray Goo Scenario and University Cafeteria Supply Issues: a Modest Proposal".
I'll forego the obvious jokes about atomic-scale diplomas, labs, etc., as the humour so derived is way to small to notice. ;)
-TBHiX-
I want little nanosites that float in my bloodstream and automatically manufacture coffee when I need it!
And good coffee at that, not the sludge that comes out of the Office coffee pot!
Do you think that would make a good thesis?
You think THIS is silly? Here in teh UK, we (used to) give students grants and free tuition. Then someone noticed that it worked out cheaper than giving them state benefit and lowered unemployment figures.
Degree in the history of Darts, anyone?
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
"The UW nanotech degree program will be spread across nine departments. Thirty faculty now work in the Center for Nanotechnology."
What? Are you telling me that to be considered a nanotechnology expert, I have to complete nine Ph.D.s?
No wonder Ph.D. means "permanent head damage". These people ....
Ph.D. in Transporter Technology
Ph.D. in Holodeck Science
Ph.D. in Geology, focus of Planet Terraforming
...and dare I say it...
Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence.
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all, is the person who argues with him.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Does that mean that now, I can start computing the interest of my bank account on a nano scale level, instead of having the bank round it up to zero all the time?
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!!!
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
I can see it now.
Prof: You didn't hand in your project.
Student: It's right there.
Prof: Where? I don't see it.
Student: Right there, underneath that piece of dust.
Prof: Ah yes, I must have missed it.
--------- Beware the dragon, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
Nanotech will change all this - features will be way too small to show off .... instead we'll probably be bragging about "do you remember that cold you had last summer ..."
The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all, is the person who argues with him.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
No I can get course credit for trying to construct one of those nano-swords from Deus Ex. :)
--Brogdon
This tagline is umop apisdn.
The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all, is the person who argues with him.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
This is sad. After all these years of nanotechnology, people are only starting to have department of nanotechnology.
And, this also seem like a trendy thing (Stanford Mech Eng dept is hiring Physicists to teach quantum mechanics to their grad students so they can do nanotech blalh blah.
The gauntlet was thrown down by Feynman years ago : read this.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
Actually, they didn't even do it right. It should have been.
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
(You Have Been Trolled. You Have Lost. Have A Nice Day.)
It goes back to the wonderful days of USENET, when there wasn't such thing as this newfangled web. We used gopher, and we liked it. And we read usenet with rn or trn, and we didn't have to deal with aol.com, and if we made our sigs more than 4 lines, we would see it being made fun of in alt.fan.warlord.
Then the floodgates opened... and today we get to read about pouring hot grits down a petrified Natalie Portman's shorts and get links to goatse.cx. (you know, if evolution is real, why are people seeming to become less and less intelligent?)
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"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Well, you know what they say in the nanotech field:
"Don't sweat the small stuff, because it's all small stuff."
...that's probably why they've issued the degree under a "Philosophy" banner rather than a Technology banner.
Ordinarily, it would be quite stupid to put a technical degree under a Philosophy banner....Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) usually only refers to natural sciences and philosphy, art, etc. (Geology, Anthropology, Mathematics, Physics etc). Anything applied, like Applied Mathematics, Computers, Electronics, Robotics etc, would usually go under a Technology or Science degree (D.Sc or D.T/D.Tech)Everything is but a number spoken by itself.
The reason that progress is slow at the start of a new field is that the pioneers have to teach themselves. Once a field is established by those people then a university can start 'professing' what the pioneers discovered and grant degrees in the subject.
This greatly expands the quantity of people available to work in the field, and allows the graduates to look down their noses at the pioneers and say: "We don't hire people without degrees." This has the benefit of allowing less talented people to work without having to compete with the rare people who can teach themselves to do something at a Ph.D. level without formal instruction.
I can tell you that this isn't merely a grab for attention as some have claimed in their slashdot responses, but is more a step in the right direction. What better school than the University of Washington, who already receives more research dollars than every other public school in the country, and receives the second most overall. A degree in nanotech will create an atmosphere where more and more researchers will soon be able to dedicate their potential and their academic prowress towards moving in the right direction for a true start.
Either way, it will still be many years before anyone could truly guage the effectiveness of this program, but if the program succeedes, you can guarantee that they Ivy League Schools will be all over it.
The future is here, and boy will it be grand.
Beowulf clusters will be extra important once nano tech is used to develop a computer. I would say linux would run quite nicely on a nanotech computer.
I think Linus and a nanotech PhD should get together. They would revolutionize the computer industry which is in need of some serious innovation.
I think you are a good example of nanotechology Mr. Big Ol'Troll.
Down with GNU. Long live the ENL.
No kidding. Just last week I built a self-replicating robot that rips apart any carbon structures it finds and makes copies of itself. I thought it was pretty impressive, but now some clueless frat boy with a Ph.D. is going to end up getting the position I rightfully deserve.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
This may be the first degree >program, but te first nanotech PhD was awarded to Eric Drexler, some years ago.
MIT, I think it was.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I've heard of alot of academics trying to posture themselves as nanotech players in the last couple years, with alot of rosy talk about what they're going to do but little by way of concrete results. Seems like we've seen this before with past fads such as chaos/complex systems and string theory. I'm a little skeptical of scientists who spend all their time publicity seeking and little of it in the lab. When Einstein was developing his theory of relativity, he didn't prance around crowing about all the things he was going to do and how great they'd be, he just sat inside his room and worked things out. I'm not saying I have anything against nanotech, I'm saying do something significant, then come talk to us.
if they build a nano humanoid robot will they equip it with buckyballs?
"..don't you eat that yellow snow."
Cole's Axiom: The sum of intelligence in the world is a constant. The population is increasing.
(and if anyone knows who actually said that, please let me know. I never knew.)
I go to the U of Washington, and while this program may be new, the focus on nanotech has long been a possible 'degree branch' in the BioEngineering and BioChem programs here.
I've got friends who're in these degrees and are speciallizing in Nanotechnology. It's almost bad that it is now its own program, because as everyone has already said, WHO CARES? There's very little practical job market for a graduate. Its almost like a story about a particularly charismatic ceramic engineering professor I heard once--he convinced a lot of students that cermaics was the future, and after they had gotten their degrees naturally they were screwed. At least with the background stuffed down your throat in the BioChem and BioEng departments you can go places.
Hopefully, the vapor will condense into a solid, viable department sometime in the not-too-distant future along with Nanotech's development into a solid, viable field with commercial (read: necessary) applications. The latter is, of course, a requirement of the former.
My friends probably wont be lining up to apply to this degree.
-S
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Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
Be sure that when you read the second article, you check out the link that the Eastside Journal has to "Ooh La La, Intimate Apparel".
Mmm... nanotechnology and tacky lingerie.
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That's nothing. The BBC recently repo rte d that the University of Surrey is appointing a Professor of Airline Catering. Noted restaurant critic Egon Ronay commented, "You might as well appoint a professor of shoe cleaning"
HH
Okay, so it may well be the first degree program, but isn't Karl Eric Drexler (of MIT and rhe Foresight Institute) already a PhD in this area? I bought Nanosystems (availible from Amazon a while ago (and it went over my head), but I'm sure that was in the easy-to-understand "About the Author" section Sarcas
I also go to UW and well, I've heard nothing of this Nanotalkie stuff. Can I use it with my Nokia cell phone? Oh yeah, and my fraternity... I'm a Sociology major. (J/k steve-0) We gotta represent UW. Moo post
.: 2+2 = PI SQRT(1+N)
But when will the first Nanotech for Dummies be out?
managers...why god invented purgatory
How long until Hemos gets an honorary degree for his unrelenting exellence nanotech reporting?
-- Anne Marie
I read Nanodot just as frequently as I read Slashdot. Nanodot is a forum built off of slashcode where people talk about oncoming technologies. Sad thing is that there's only about 3 or 4 replies per article. There is some great discussion going on here that could just get better on Nanodot. Check it out and comment it up! Don't let it sit there...
I've read a few comments saying that it is too early to have a nanotech degree. Last week I was at another function of the College of Engineering here at the University of Washington. The Dean gave a brief explanation of why we are the first University to have such a degree. Over that last couple of years the College of Engineering has had a lot of older profs retire. The University has been been very aggressive in replacing those old professors with the best and brightest. Many of those new faculty decided to come because of our superior facilities in Microfabrication (right next to my lab) and Photonics. As a result we have a faculty whose main interests lies in micro- and nano- sized machines.
You might not believe it, but Economics is a science, or at least a part of Economics is - just do a google search on "experimental economics." Of course, I am biased - experimental econ is what I am going to spend the next five (maybe 50) years of my life on :)
http://hedweb.com/hedab.htm
It's a bit of a long shot, but I'm graduating with my PhD "Nanosimulation of the Cytoskeleton" - basically a big sim program of how nanometer scale thingumies can self-assemble - next week... Still I guess I'm graduating in 'computer science' rather than 'Nanotechnology' ...
- Chris Betts
P.S. Shameless plug: 'most' of it's on the web pegacat.com/phd
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird.
Well, it looks as though I know where I'm moving after I'm done with my current schooling :)
Man, I love Seattle/UW......
With all the buggy and exploitable crap coming out of wu, wouldn't it be wiser to let some other university pioneer in nanotech?
"Of course we can use strcpy here, why would anybody want to overwrite the code that just prevents the machine from replicating exponentially..."
NOSPAM@REMOVETHIS.NO.SPAM - you'll find the real address somewhere
This is a technology that is being developed experimentally everyday. Nanoparticles are not theoretical but actual physical products that can be created in the lab. For a nice spoof of slashdot with the latest nanotech info goto: www.nanodot.org