Congratulations on choosing Nanotechnology Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Your next 5 years in the program will prove to be challenging, but as long as you keep an open mind and take as much as you can from the diverse range of courses, you will find the experience very rewarding.
In your first year, you will be taking a set of courses that will give you an important base of knowledge onto which the rest of the program builds. Courses like Linear Algebra, Computation, Calculus, Materials, Chemistry and Physics are some of the courses you will be taking. Although the courses will seem somewhat disjointed at first, trust me when I say that it all comes together down the road. Think of this as learning a new “language” which can be used to describe the world around you, and you will definitely surprise yourself when you realize that you can actually “speak” it only a year or two later.
There are a variety of resources available on-campus to initiate you into the field of “Nano-Engineering.” The Waterloo Institute of Nanotechnology is your number one resource for information on the field of nanotechnology. WIN hosts a multitude of “Distinguished Lecturer” seminars in which professors from around the world are invited to discuss their cutting-edge nanotechnology research. Many upper year students have also found that participating in an Undergraduate Research Assistantship (URA), pursuing specialized “options” in a field of interest (including options in Physics and Biology), or joining student clubs or teams can be very useful supplements to their academic careers.
At the end of the day, what you need to remember is that Nanotechnology is not the narrow field it appears to be. It has applications in all fields of engineering and science, and it’s up to you to figure out how to make the magic happen.
Nanotechnology isn’t just the future. Nanotechnology is NOW.
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