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Welcome!
Welcome to the website of the Rensselaer Nanotechnology Center (RNC). Founded in March of 2001 on the campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the nation’s oldest technological university, the Center is primarily involved with fundamental nanotechnology research in materials, devices and systems. The RNC utilizes and disseminates the information it develops through close ties with industry and through innovative educational outreach activities aimed at exciting and educating a diverse cadre of students of all ages from K‐12 through postdoctorate in nanoscale science and engineering. By combining computational design with experimentation we are discovering novel pathways to assemble functional multiscale nanostructures with junctions and interfaces between structurally, dimensionally, and compositionally different nanoscale building blocks to create useful hierarchical material systems.
For the past decade, the RNC has hosted the National Science Foundation's prestigious Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC) for Directed Assembly of Nanostuctures. Our NSEC research program consists of three coordinated interdisciplinary and inter-institutional thrusts, all of which have been highly successful, individually and together: Nanoparticle Gels and Polymer Nanocomposites; Nanostructured Biomolecule Composite Architectures; and Serving Society through Education and Outreach. There have been a significant number of major accomplishments in our NSEC program during the ten-year period 2001-2011, which are documented in our Annual Reports to the NSF and available on the NSEC webpage.
Educational Opportunities at the RNC