Project Profile
Advanced Optical Materials
University of California at Santa Barbara
Abstract
This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) award supports the establishment of a multidisciplinary graduate training program of education and research on advanced optical materials. The program will train students in emerging areas of optical materials technology and engineering, bridging new materials development with device fabrication and testing. This… more »
This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) award supports the establishment of a multidisciplinary graduate training program of education and research on advanced optical materials. The program will train students in emerging areas of optical materials technology and engineering, bridging new materials development with device fabrication and testing. This effort will benefit from and augment existing strengths at UCSB in science and engineering education, which derive particularly from the highly collaborative inter-disciplinary research environment and internationally leading efforts in advanced optical materials.
Graduate research training will focus on two areas of great scientific interest and commercial promise: (1) photonic optical circuits; and (2) nitride-based semiconductors. The IGERT program involves faculty and students from five departments and will be structured to promote interactions among multidisciplinary teams; the UCSB research groups involved have a strong and prolific track record for working together. A major plank of the program is a strong outreach effort to encourage women and under-represented minority students to pursue careers in science and engineering, with emphasis on their recruitment, mentoring, and training in advanced optical materials technologies. An important component for all IGERT students will be scientific exchange and cooperation with industrial and national laboratory partners, as well as the fostering of entrepreneurial perspectives and initiatives for high-technology small-business creation.
IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the multidisciplinary backgrounds and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing new, innovative models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. In the third year of the program, awards are being made to nineteen institutions for programs that collectively span all areas of science and engineering supported by NSF. The intellectual foci of this specific award reside in the Directorates for Engineering, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and Education and Human Resources. « less
