Features
New Nanoscience Program to Begin Next Fall
Pioneering major will give Guelph undergrads the big picture on the ‘very small'
BY ANDREW VOWLES
U of G scientists are thinking big about the “very small” with a pioneering undergraduate nanoscience major to begin on campus in 2008. Approved earlier this year, the new interdisciplinary degree will be jointly provided by the departments of Chemistry and Physics and will draw on research and teaching strengths in those and related departments, says Prof. Dan Thomas, Chemistry, associate dean of the B.Sc. program.
Looking to establish an early lead in a rapidly growing field, Guelph will accept up to 50 entering students for the four-year program starting in fall 2008, with a projected steady-state enrolment of about 175. No other Canadian university offers a full-fledged nanoscience major, says Thomas.
Nanoscience involves developing materials on the scale of individual atoms and molecules, typically less than about 100 nanometres in size. In that Lilliputian world, materials display special — even counterintuitive — electrical and chemical properties being explored by companies eager to make new devices and products such as microchips and drug delivery systems.
Other universities offer nanoscience courses within chemistry, physics and engineering programs. The University of Toronto has an engineering specialization in nanotechnology, and the University of Waterloo introduced a nanotech major in its engineering program last year (nanotech incorporates materials developed through nanoscience into new devices). Unable to accommodate growing demand in this field, those programs routinely turn away top applicants, says Thomas, who headed the committee that developed the proposal for Guelph's new program. “This is an opportunity to be a leader.”
He explains that advancements and interest in nanoscience have grown out of all proportion to the vanishingly small size of the materials and structures being explored for uses in such areas as computing and microelectronics, biotechnology, energy, toxicology and medicine.
“It's moved very quickly from the realm of the science lab to the very first commercial products,” says Thomas, who studies nanoscale properties of materials and substances.
His lab is using various elements to assemble materials with unusual properties for possible use in solid oxide fuel cells and as catalytic surfaces for monitoring blood glucose.
U of G's new program will include a mix of fundamental science courses and “nano” offerings such as synthesis and analysis of nanomaterials, thin film science, nanolithography, quantum chemistry and computing, and biological nanomaterials.
That last term evokes Guelph's particular strengths in possible biological applications, says Prof. John Dutcher, Canada Research Chair in Soft Matter Physics and a theme leader in the Advanced Foods and Materials Network based at U of G.
“There are lots of interesting things happening on the nanoscale,” he says. “At Guelph it goes well beyond physics and chemistry — it exists across campus.”
Dutcher's own collaborative research investigating thin films and bacterial surfaces already occurs on the nanoscale. Microbiologists, biochemists and physicists are isolating and modifying components in bacterial cell walls that might be used one day to make new kinds of fabrics. Various researchers are also using nanoscale tools to study how enzymes degrade cellulose, which may help in producing cellulose ethanol more efficiently.
He adds that much of the growth in nanoscience has been driven by new analytical and imaging techniques and equipment that now allow researchers to “see” things at that scale. Guelph already has much of that state-of-the-art equipment, including spectrometers, special microscopes such as an atomic-force instrument that gives an atom's-eye view of surfaces, and X-ray scattering facilities for studying atomic structure.
“People recognize this as an extremely hot area and an excellent opportunity,” says Prof. David Kribs, Mathematics and Statistics. “I think Guelph has carved out a niche for itself.”
An affiliate member of the Institute for Quantum Computing in Waterloo, Kribs studies error correction in quantum information science. He's interested in how altered physical and electrical properties at the quantum scale may lead to more powerful computers with parts as small as atoms or even their constituents.
“Any hope of implementing quantum computing will come from nanoscience,” says Nathaniel Johnston, a graduate student of Kribs's who received a Governor General's Medal at convocation this spring. He will use a Canada Graduate Scholarship to study the math behind quantum computing.
“All the classical laws of physics don't hold on that level,” he says.