Online courses covering the fundamentals of nanotechnology will be offered beginning in 2012 by the science portal nanoHUB, the national Network for Computational Nanotechnology and Purdue University.

Registration fees for each of the two five-week courses is $30, and continuing education credits are available for an extra fee.

Students in the courses will make use of simulation and modeling tools and the computational resources found at nanoHUB.org, allowing students to execute actual nanotechnology engineering simulations as part of their training.{hwdvs-player}id=389|height=240|width=300{/hwdvs-player}

The courses are aimed at engineers, academics, graduate students and others who need to understand both the basics and the latest developments in the field of nanoelectronics.

The first course, "Basic Concepts of Nanoelectronics," will include five topics:

* "The New 'Ohm's Law'"

* "Quantum of Conductance"

* "The Nanotransistor"

* "The Spinning Electron"

* "Electricity from Heat"

The second five-week course will cover quantum models for nanoelectronic devices.

Supriyo Datta, Purdue's Thomas Duncan Professor in the College of Electrical and Computer Engineering, will be teaching nanoHUB's first two courses.

"Although we will be discussing cutting-edge concepts in nanoelectronics, the course will be understandable to anyone with a basic background in science and mathematics," Datta says. "We make every effort to avoid using specialist jargon so that it is accessible to people from all branches of engineering and science."

The first course begins Jan. 23, and the second course will begin March 19. Additional course information and registration are available athttp://www.nanohub.org/u

Students in the courses will be able to interact with Datta and other faculty and fellow students using the Purdue-developed HotSeat technology.

Datta is an award-winning researcher and teacher whose books on nanoelectronics - "Electronic Transport in Microscopic Systems" (Cambridge, 1995) and "Quantum Transport: Atom to Transistor" (Cambridge, 2005) - are used as standard texts in the field of nanoelectronics.

Mark Lundstrom, Purdue's Don and Carol Scifres Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, says Datta's previous lectures have been viewed more than 75,000 times at the nanoHUB.org site.

"Most of us in the field would agree that Supriyo is the Richard Feynman of nanoelectronics," Lundstrom says.

Lundstrom adds that the lectures are part of a larger effort to relate the latest advances in nanotechnology to the traditional disciplines of science and engineering.

"We're rethinking applied science and engineering, and we're inviting a worldwide audience to participate in that," he says. "The aim is to present and package nanotechnology in a way that's never been done before."