Industrial/academic internships at IBM-almaden under NSF programs

Abstract

Industrial experience can be a significant factor in materials science education, and internships at our laboratory under two NSF programs directly impact undergraduates and high school teachers. In these programs, the participants become a member of individual, existing research groups under a mentor on a technical project relevant to IBM. The research is publishable but closely related to a technical area important to IBM. During the summer the participants become members of the research group, attending departmental meetings and informal discussions. In addition, they attend a special seminar series on industrial research frontiers, receive career-training discussions, and participate in a variety of other programs sponsored for summer interns by IBM. Every participant presents a poster at an internal technical meeting at IBM or a technical meeting at Stanford (or both) at the end of the summer. One of the programs, an NSF MRSEC "Center for Polymer Interfaces and Macromolecular Interfaces" (CPIMA), involves a partnership with Stanford University and the University of California at Davis. The CPIMA program has an active group of postdoctoral scientists, graduate students, undergraduate (summer) students and (summer) high school teachers. In addition to IBM, summer students in CPIMA may work with other industrial firms who are industrial affiliates of CPIMA. In addition, CPIMA has a public science and K-12 component in materials science in educational outreach with the The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose. The other program, an NSF GOALI grant on "Surface and Analytical Chemistry of Materials" with San Jose State University, involves undergraduate and graduate (masters) San Jose State University students during the academic year who work on collaborative research projects between IBM scientists and San Jose State University professors. In addition, this project also has a large summer program with undergraduates from across the US and with high school teachers. The impact of the programs on the students, teachers, and institutions will be reviewed, with a special emphasis on the impact on the industrial partner. © 2001 Materials Research Society.