Education

Research is increasingly interdisciplinary. Scientists from diverse disciplines must be able to communicate and interact to bring large projects to fruition. At the University of Utah we are assembling teams of undergraduates from different majors to complete a project.

One area that overlaps with Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Math, Engineering and Computer Sciences is microscopy. We recruit students from different disciplines to work together to solve a problem in optics or microscopy. The students work together in a group and rely on each others’ expertise. If they lack expertise within the group, they are expected to seek and enlist needed expertise at the university. The team meets weekly to update the group on their assignment. Students are also trained in entrepreneurship. If the project is successful, the students are encouraged to patent and commercialize the product with the help of the university’s Technology Commercialization Office.

Two courses have been offered in the past: