Nanotechnology’s Quiet Revolution: Shaping Medicine, Environment, and Technology

Nanotechnology is a subtle but influential part of the world around us, driving advances in everything from medicine and food packaging to electronic devices and environmental science. Scientists have used nanotechnology to control pollution, reduce side-effects from medical treatments, and, in 2020, develop the mRNA vaccine that helped society emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic.

This important developing field, ripe with economic opportunities, is still sometimes missing from the K-12 curriculum. It’s a situation that the UC San Diego Qualcomm Institute’s (QI) Program Manager for Education and Outreach Yves Theriault seeks to correct through the Nanotechnology Summer Institute for Middle and High School Teachers held at QI’s Atkinson Hall.

This five-day workshop, founded by Theriault in 2020 and modeled after a similar offering at Stanford University, introduces teachers to nanotechnology with the goal of helping them incorporate the topic into their science curricula. Downstream, the program seeks to educate and inspire more young students to develop an interest in nanotechnology as a field that touches many parts of life and could offer an exciting career.

The Nanotechnology Summer Institute runs in two cohorts annually in June and July.

“If [students] go on to work in science and technology, they will eventually do things that relate to nanotechnology,” said Theriault. “I thought this would be a wonderful way to reach out to students at the K-12 level.”

‘Nanotechnology surrounds us’
Teachers entered the program with different backgrounds and levels of familiarity with nanotechnology. For Reuben Medlock, 2024 marked his third year participating in the program.

Medlock works as a “teacher on special assignment” in Oceanside, California, where he collaborates with other educators to help them develop science and math-based curriculum. Medlock heard about the Nanotechnology Summer Institute through a colleague and previous institute attendee. Since his first stint with the program in 2022, he has returned every year, saying the institute has informed and shaped the way he approaches his own coaching.

“I really enjoyed seeing the teachers’ creativity and the way they built their lesson plans in their own styles,” said Medlock. “Taking pieces of that and sharing with other teachers was inspiring.”

The summer institute has also proved to be a prolific platform for collaboration. Lance Heinemann, a biology teacher at Granite Hills High School in El Cajon, California, began working with Theriault to design a custom science curriculum months before the workshop began. Their plan incorporates nanotechnology’s role in the creation of the COVID-19 vaccine, an event that has shaped students’ lives.

Teachers ran through hands-on activities they could use to demonstrate complicated ideas in nanotechnology to their students, including placing foam pieces with magnets in water. The attractive and repulsive forces of the magnets push the pieces to form unique arrangements, demonstrating the principle of molecular self-assembly.

Yves Theriault gestures in a classroom.
QI Program Manager for Education and Outreach Yves Theriault invites California middle and high school teachers to learn about nanotechnology in the annual Nanotechnology Summer Institute. Photo by Hana Tobias/QI.
Attendees were welcomed by Qualcomm Institute Director Ramesh Rao and Yu-Hwa Lo, Faculty Director of the Qualcomm Institute’s cleanroom facility Nano3—a name that reflects its emphasis on multiple nanotechnology disciplines including nanoscience, nanoengineering, and nanomedicine. On the program’s final day, the attendees delivered capstone presentations demonstrating what they learned or what they planned to integrate into their curricula, showing how this knowledge will reach many students across the state.

“Nanotechnology surrounds us at all times and is such an important part of our lives,” said Heinemann. “The way that we improve our technology and medicine from here on out is through nanotechnology. At the same time, it’s not a perfect technology, and part of solving that is educating students.”

A foundation for success
The Nanotechnology Summer Institute for Middle and High School Teachers is an initiative of the San Diego Nanotechnology Infrastructure, one of 16 National Science Foundation-supported centers of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI), a nationwide network of facilities that make their spaces and tools available to academic, industry, and government researchers. It is also funded in part by the State of California through the Qualcomm Institute’s Workforce Development Program.

Nano3’s scanning electron microscope (SEM) has also come into play with the Nanotechnology Summer Institute. With many times the power of a classroom microscope, the SEM offers students in K-12 classrooms around San Diego County and across the nation a first-hand glimpse at the nanoscale.

Two teachers listen as Yves Theriault speaks in the Nanotechnology Summer Institute.
Two teachers in the July cohort of the Nanotechnology Summer Institute listen during a presentation in QI’s Atkinson Hall. Photo by Hana Tobias/QI.
Using remote technology, Theriault has for years connected local classrooms with the SEM, allowing students to observe in real-time specimens that include gold and silver nanoparticles, nanofibers, butterfly wings, prehistoric deep sea sediments with zoo- and phytoplankton, and electronic devices at the micro and nanoscale. Now, he is extending that opportunity to interested teachers with the Nanotechnology Summer Institute, along with added support in developing curriculum.

Damien Jacotin, who attended with his wife, Kelly Green-Jacotin, a biology and engineering teacher at Burroughs High School in Ridgecrest, California, recommends the Nanotechnology Summer Institute as an avenue for honing one’s educational craft.

“This training went above my expectations,” said Jacotin, who teaches AP calculus, engineering, and digital electronics at Burroughs High School. “I want this to be available to more people.”