2017-2018 Initiatives Network Activities
Annual NNCI Meeting Over 80 participants from the 16 member sites, the NSF, and the NNCI Advisory Committee attended the NNCI conference, hosted by the Singh Center for Nanotechnology. The first day included site overviews from their directors, and this year the overviews were presented in the form of short presentations followed by panel discussions. The four topics of these panel discussions: Redefining Traditional Roles; Resource Allocation and New Equipment; Future Research Directions; and New Education and Outreach, were chosen to help the sites understand how to best serve our users. The panels invoked lively questions, answers, and comments from the participants. On the second day of the conference, breakout sessions looked into Facility Management, Diversity, New Business Development Concepts, and Training Programs and Workshops. These sessions were followed by a review of the discussions before all of the attendees. The meeting concluded with an Advisory Board Report. Parallel meetings were held to discuss nanotechnology education and nanotechnology societal and ethical implications. Two technical talks were presented at the conference: Professor Mehdi Javanmard from Rutgers University described research his group is conducting at the Singh Center on electro-fluidic nanotechnology, which provided an outside academic user perspective; and Professor Eric Stach from the University of Pennsylvania, who described the new research avenues he expects to pursue with the electron microscope suite the center is currently installing.