International Project Boosts Nanotechnology Research and Education

By Margot Dimond

Rice University has been awarded $2.2 million by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a five-year project that will offer an integrated approach to international research and education in the area of nanotechnology.

The U.S.–Japan Cooperative Research and Education program, titled “Ultrafast and Nonlinear Optics in 6.1—Angstrom Semiconductors,” will investigate the optical properties of several semiconductors, including indium arsenide, gallium antimonide, and aluminum antimonide.

Junichiro Kono, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice, is the program’s principal investigator. Members of his research group will use ultrashort laser pulses to create, manipulate, and study a variety of electron quantum states in materials supplied by their Japanese collaborators. The investigations could lead to new, ultrafast information-processing technologies.

Rice’s grant is one of only 12 in the nation awarded in this year’s NSF Partnerships for International Research and Education program designed to help U.S. institutions “establish collaborative relationships with foreign groups or institutions in order to advance specific research and education objects and to make possible a research effort that neither side could accomplish on its own.”

The multidisciplinary program includes participation from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Career Services Center, and the Office of International Programs. Co-principal investigators from Rice include Patrick Frantz, lecturer on electrical and computer engineering and special liaison for international engineering programs, and Hiroko Sato, lecturer in the Center for the Study of Languages. Also participating are the physics departments at Texas A&M University and the University of Florida.

In addition to the research itself, the program includes a nanotechnology summer program in Japan, designed to encourage U.S. undergraduates to enter the field of nanotechnology and prepare them for work in the international arena. After a four-week orientation in the Tokyo area, including intensive language instruction and basic science taught by graduate students, 16 freshman and sophomore students will engage in six- to eight-week research internships in the laboratories of Rice’s Japanese partners. At the end of the summer, all of the students will meet in Houston to participate in a weeklong nanotechnology symposium held in conjunction with a Rice Quantum Institute event. And finally, the award provides permanent funding for the annual INNOVATE conference in Asia, which offers students an in-depth look at globalization, leadership, and technology.