Achievement

Prof. Pat Mather (Bioengineering) and Prof. Mark Bowick (Physics) co-taught the new course Open Problems in Interface Science in Spring 2013. In this novel literature course students searched the recent literature on an agreed-upon topic for interesting articles, then pitched their chosen article to the class. The entire class then picked one article to be studied in depth and discussed in detail at the following meeting. The course also included hands-on assignment and exercises, such as mock refereeing, writing a submission letter for a paper, drafting a brief research proposal. The students found the course very useful and enjoyed it greatly. The total enrollment was 13 students (including 5 IGERT trainees) from a variety of departments, including biology, chemistry, physics and bioengineering. One important outcome of the course is that this diverse group of students were pushed to find a common language and learned how to communicate effectively with each other.