“Engineering is changing incredibly rapidly, and engineering education must change in major ways in response,” says Paul Peercy, dean of engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “The boundaries between science and engineering are fading. Thirty or forty years ago, people worked alone and in small teams. If you think about the next generation of solutions to complex problems, they're going to be obtained by large interdisciplinary teams.”
Forging the mindset and connections to nurture large interdisciplinary teams is the aim of the National Institute for Nano-Engineering, a partnership among industry, government, and university researchers that is getting started with the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico as its base. Besides Sandia, 12 universities and 7 companies make up NINE's founding members, but the partnership is open to expansion, and researchers from any university can participate, says Duane Dimos, Sandia's director of materials science and engineering. NINE's...