Academic/Industrial/NSF Collaborations at the IBM Almaden Research Center-Benefits from Dr. Marni Goldman's Involvement

Abstract

AbstractCollege undergraduate and high school teacher internships are significant factors in materials science education. Traditionally, NSF-supported internships are done in academia. The NSF-supported academic/industrial internship programs involving Stanford University, San Jose University and the IBM Almaden Research Center extend the impact by the inclusion of an industrial research component. Internships through San Jose State University have existed since 1994 under a variety of NSF grants, most recently with NSF-REU support for undergraduate internships. Internships through Stanford university have existed since 1995 through an NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, the “Center for Polymer Interfaces and Macromolecular Interfaces” (CPIMA). In these programs, the interns become members of an existing research group for 10 weeks and have their own project under a mentor. The interns attend a weekly seminar series on industrial research frontiers, a career day, a Graduate Record Examination workshop, a graduate school workshop, and tours of industrial research labs. Every participant presents a poster at an internal technical meeting at IBM at the end of the summer. For the industrial internships at IBM, the research is publishable but closely related to a technical area important to IBM. While the undergraduate and teacher internship programs are the major components of educational outreach of CPIMA, many other projects have been pursued, including public science, programs with local high schools, and science outreach to local community colleges. Dr. Marni Goldman was the Director of Educational Outreach for CPIMA from 2000 until her death in 2007, and she started many of the educational projects and programs. She was especially interested in diversity and initiated an internship program for students who are disabled. The programs will be reviewed and her contributions emphasized.