IGERT Story
The face of nanotechnology at Illinois, CNST promotes interdisciplinary collaboration
Description
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign IGERT CMMB faculty member, Irfan Ahmad, is the executive director of the Illinois’ Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST). CNST works to provide training and to foster collaboration in nanotechnology at the intersection of engineering and biology.
Why should engineers need to learn about biology?
According to Ahmad, the national academies have identified the 21st century as the century of biology.
“So that means that we are mimicking biology; we are trying to come up with techniques, tools, processes which we learn from biology.” However, Ahmad acknowledges that “Some of us who were trained as engineers did not have good grounding in the biological or life science aspects.” So this is a void CNST is trying to fill. Full Story >>
