Vinit S. Murthy
PhD Candidate
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering,
Rice University, Houston, Texas
Educational path
· Bachelor of Engineering; Department of Chemical
Engineering at (Regional Engineering College,
Surathkal, India); graduated in 2000
· PhD Candidate; Department of Chemical and Biomolecular
Engineering, (Rice University); expect to graduate
in May 2006
Special training
for nanotechnology
I have instrument expertise in scanning electron
microscopes, dynamic light scattering, visible
light spectroscopy, and optical microscopes. I
also attended a special topics course on 'Optical
Microscopy and Imaging in the Biomedical Sciences'
at Marine Biological Laboratory, Woodshole, Massachusetts.
Tips/Advice to jumpstart
a career in nanotechnology
Well, the tips differ from person to person, depending
on their educational background and their preferred
career (doing a PhD versus starting a company).
But below are some pointers for people who know
elementary science, but don't exactly know what
nanotechnology is.
* Get yourself “Nanotechnology
for Dummies” by Richard Booker. This book
gives an interesting lay-description of what nanotechnology
is all about, why is everyone so excited about
it, and its ramifications in different industries.
* Lure a graduate student
working in the area of nanotechnology to show
you some cool gadgets where you can look at objects
that are a million times smaller than a flea (free
lunch helps!). These instruments really knocked
my socks off when I saw them the first time.
* Follow some of the nanotech
companies, such as Lux Research Inc. which is
a nanotech research and advisory firm. This will
tell you what's hot and what's not from a business
perspective.
* In addition to the above
avenues, there are other magazines targeted to
the lay-person, for examples “SmallTimes”
and “Red Herring.”
Why did you choose
the field of nanotechnology?
I was briefly exposed to this field during my
stint at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore,
where I learned that materials at the nano size
scale show vastly different properties compared
to their bulk counterparts. The possibility of
fabricating useful structures atom by atom looked
very intriguing and prompted me to take up this
field for my graduate research. At the end of
my PhD, what Richard Feynman said seems true,
“There is plenty of room at the bottom."
How did you first
get into nanotechnology?
It was at Rice University where I experienced
the real McCoy. When joining Dr. Michael Wong's
group, I had the opportunity to get my hands dirty
in this field. My first project was to understand
the self-assembly of gold and silica nanoparticles
into hollow microspheres. For starters, the self-assembly
process can be imagined as follows: you buy a
carton of furniture parts from Ikea, shake it
up, and you are instantaneously rewarded with
fully-assembled chairs and tables! Such a thing
is certainly possibly in the nanometer length
scale where the forces governing the inter-particle
interaction are different from those for the macroscopic
objects that we handle every day.
What is it like
to work in nanotechnology?
Research in the field of nanotechnology is demanding,
yet very satisfying. The challenges come in all
shapes and sizes – from reproducibility issues
in experiments, to finding the right instrumental
technique to analyze the data. Nanotechnology
being an interdisciplinary field, one needs to
know quite a bit about different subjects such
as chemistry, biochemistry, chemical engineering,
physics, etc. Hence, a fast progress in research
warrants collaboration with experts who complement
your skills. There is also tremendous amount of
work to be done from taking the technology from
the lab to the shop floor. All in all, after all
the blood, sweat, and tears that go into the experiments,
only a nanotech researcher knows the feeling of
perfect bliss when getting that one perfect transmission
electron microscopy image.
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