14 DAY TRIAL // Experts at the Rice University announce that, starting this summer, the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies will be offering students a series of lectures on the latest discoveries in the field. This will be an amazing chance for young, forming experts to get a view of nanotechnology from one of the leading sources in the field
Rice has played an innovative role in such research for many years, and experts here are renowned for the work with nanoparticles and other, more complex molecules. They will present some of the latest advancements made in the new study, which is opened to the general public.
Top nanoscientists will participate, Rice officials say. They add that the course was set up in honor of the 25th anniversary of the discovery of buckminsterfullerene molecules, also known as the buckyballs. These carbon compounds will surely play an important role in future technologies, but experts are only now beginning to understand them.
According to its schedule, the course will deal with basic principles of nanotechnology first and foremost. However, experts making the presentation will also be covering the relationships that this field developed with medicine, the electronics industry, materials research and energy production and storage.
The Rice experts will also look at the potential hazards associated with using nanoparticles at a large scale. At this point, a lot of research groups around the world are focused on determining whether these particles have any ill effects on the human body, and experts at Rice are at the forefront of this effort.
One of the key speakers in the new course is the Rice Professor Emeritus and Kenneth S. Pitzer-Schlumberger Professor Emeritus of Natural Sciences, Robert Curl. He is member of the team that first discovered the buckeyballs. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996, for the discovery of fullerenes.
He shared the famous award with Rice colleague Richard Smalley, as well as with University of Sussex professor Harold Kroto. The latter has since relocated to the Florida State University (FSU).
“We're very early in our registration period for the fall, and it's already got a pretty good start. It's one of the more popular courses,” Glasscock School director of community programs Steve Garfinkel says.
“Our students are well-educated in general, and I think this will appeal to a pretty wide swath of people. We have some wonderful, high-powered speakers from the Smalley Institute presenting these lectures, and we think people are really going to be wowed,” he adds.