TNF Education and Outreach

Texas Nanofabrication Facility (TNF) Education & Outreach has three main activities:

REU Program - One of the goals of the REU experience is to cultivate skilled undergraduate researchers who work collaboratively with mentors. TNF hosts 5 participants each summer who participate in a well-supervised independent research project over a 10 week period. REUs participate in meetings with the PIs, graduate students, and post-docs during the summer. Several social events are scheduled throughout the program.

·         Entrepreneurship and new company formation - TNF promotes entrepreneurship and new company formation by teams of undergraduates and graduate students in relevant areas of nanotechnology.  This program leverages existing programs and centers at UT Austin:

o   The Longhorn Startup undergraduate course, which allows teams of undergraduates to create and execute a business plan, participate in pitch competitions, meet investors, work on product prototypes, etc.,

o   The Austin Technology incubator (ATI), UT Austin’s official startup incubator.  ATI accepts startup companies on a competitive basis for intensive coaching and assistance in order to help startup teams reach viability, and

o   The NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program, an intensive entrepreneurial training course which allows teams of three people (typically a faculty member, a student “entrepreneurial lead”, and a business mentor) to explore the commercial viability of a new technology or idea. 

·         Technical workshops - TNF educates its current and potential user base by organizing technical workshops. Attendees are exposed to fundamental and advanced technologies used in semiconductor device fabrication and materials research. The workshops will also serve to expose the NNCI-TNF facilities to engineers and researchers of companies and academic centers who are not yet facilities users.

For more information:

Primary contact: M. Palard, marylene@mer.utexas.edu

Secondary Contact: D. Akinwande, deji@ece.utexas.edu

http://www.mrc.utexas.edu/nnci