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Overview

The University of Texas at Austin’s internationally recognized Cockrell School of Engineering is now offering an online Certificate in Experiential Nanotechnologies.

The goals of the program are:

• To provide access for working people and remote students – offered online;
• To enable people to think critically in interdisciplinary areas including nanomanufacturing, nanometrology, & nanodevices such as flexible electronics, displays, wearables & CMOS ICs;
• To enhance students’ critical thinking abilities by introducing them to big data curation and associated analytics;
• To introduce students to industry trends/roadmaps, technology gaps, and systematic problem solving techniques; and
• To enable experiential learning in these online courses by portable nanolabs shipped to each student – a unique feature of this program.

The Experiential Nanotechnologies & Big Data Certificate Program provides students with a meaningful introduction to leading-edge and emerging trends in nano-enabled technologies, and related data analysis skills, vitally important to today’s global economy. The program is designed to enable engineers in the semiconductor & other nanotech-related industries employees to engage more deeply and comprehensively in their careers through online course instruction, real-time office hours, hands-on experiments, and associated computational projects.

Throughout the three-course graduate program, students are exposed to manufacturing technologies (e.g., thin film deposition, lithography, pattern transfer (etch), and particle and contamination control) and device technologies (e.g., displays, virtual, augmented, & mixed reality (“XR”), photovoltaics, solid state memory, processors, imaging, and energy storage). Courses in the program are taught by a team of distinguished faculty internationally recognized for their research and innovation

Admissions Requirements & Registration & Program Cost

In order to qualify for admission to the certificate program, prospective students must:

• Have an undergraduate degree in a science, engineering, or similar field.
• Have maintained an undergraduate GPA of at least a 3.0 (out of 4.0).
• Provide a copy of your undergraduate transcript.

The cost of the program is $2,500 per course (i.e., a total cost of $7,500 for all three courses). Payment for each course is required at the time of registration for each course.

Taught by Nanofabrication & Nanodevice Experts

This certificate program was created and is maintained by experts from the Nanomanufacturing Systems Center headquartered at UT Austin. NASCENT is an NSF-funded engineering research center created with the goal of developing novel wafer-based and roll-to-roll nanofabrication systems to enable future mobile devices. The center has fostered research collaborations with the world’s leading nanofabrication companies (e.g., in the semiconductor industry), and includes world-leading faculty in nanofabrication, nanodevices, and data analytics.

Online Learning with Hands-on Lab Experience!

• Each of the three courses comprising the certificate program is a semester-long course.
• Students completing each course earn 3 transcripted credit hours of UT Austin engineering graduate course credit.
• Courses are taught online, with recorded lectures that can be viewed at the student’s convenience. Multiple online office hours are held weekly with the instructor in real time a video conferencing solution.
• Students gain hands-on experience by completing several portable nanotech labs which are shipped to each student. The labs may be completed at home, and are included with the course at no additional cost.
• Students gain computational & big data experience by completing computational projects accompanying the lectures and hands-on experiments.

Program Overview

• Course 1: Nanofabrication and Nanomaterials (3 credit hours)
  • Emerging trends, industry and research roadmaps, and grand challenges.
  • Thin film deposition via wet and dry processes.
  • Lithography and etch.
  • Particle and contamination control.
  • Functional nanomaterials.
• Course 2: Nanodevices (3 credit hours)
  • Nanotechnologies for energy generation.
  • Nanotechnologies for energy storage and lighting.
  • Nanotechnologies for displays.
  • Nano-enabled transistors, sensors, and memory.
• Course 3: Nanometrology and Big Data (3 credit hours)
  • Metrology techniques: microscopy (optical, AFM, SEM), inspection, critical dimension & overlay metrology.
  • Basics of programming, data curation & visualization.
  • Computational modeling of nanosystems.
  • Data analytics, evolutionary algorithms, optimization.

Benefits to you:

• Learn how nanoscale manufacturing technologies work together to fabricate today’s cutting-edge nano-enabled devices. Gain exposure to how devices such as photovoltaics, transistors, displays solid state memory, and hard drives function.
• Learn relevant sensing and metrology approaches in nanotechnology. Understand how to manage, interpret & visualize the resulting big data that comes from these sensing & metrology approaches. Understand learning algorithms & optimization techniques applicable to these systems.
• Stand out from your peers - gain skills better enabling you to think critically in interdisciplinary areas such as semiconductor devices, displays & XR, healthcare, and energy.
• Learn concepts and problem-solving skills important for career advancement and future graduate programs.
• For engineers focused on individual unit processes – gain an overview of the entire manufacturing infrastructure necessary for fabricating complete, working systems.
• Receive reference materials for use after the courses to sustain long-term success
• Earn 9 credit-hours of valuable graduate engineering credit online from a top-10 engineering school.