Few fields in science have gained such an enormous interest in such a short time as nanoscience. The fantastic development of fabrication of structures and objects on the nanoscale now provides an arena for modern physics, chemistry, materials science, and biology. Moreover, nanoscience often combines several of these disciplines. When today´s nanoscience will be explored in tomorrow's nanotechnology there will be a need for specialists and engineers in nanotechnology with backgrounds from all these fields. We can anticipate a need of a new type of engineer with much broader, but still high level, expertise than today. How can we design educational programmes in nanoscience to meet the present and future needs of students, universities, industry, and society?
Within the Erasmus Mundus Master framework, five top European Universities (KU Leuven, Belgium, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, Delft University of Technology and Leiden University, the Netherlands, and the University of Dresden, Germany) have joined forces, pooling their individual expertise and experience in nanoscience and nanotechnology, to offer a unique master programme. Depending on their background and interest, the students design and build their individual area of specialisation (e.g. within nanophysics, nanoelectronics, bionano, biophysics) through their choice of trajectory between the partners. The programme has a strong link between education and research, which ensures a contemporary programme at the cutting edge of state-of-the art research. Our Erasmus Mundus Master programme "Nanoscience and Nanotechnolgy" (EMM-nano) is now in its second year. We have attracted top students from all around the world and the first students will graduate this spring.
We here take the opportunity to discuss how we have met some of the challenges related to the crossdisciplinary nature of the field of nanoscience and nanotechnology, educational activities in cleanroom laboratories, the different backgrounds and expectations of our students, and some issues related to the integration of teaching programmes across the boarders within Europe.
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