LSU Integrative Graduate Education

Research Training

Teaching Craft for Macromolecular

Creativity

IGERT is…

IntegrativeGraduateEducationResearch Training

Why not TIGER instead???

19 IGERT Awards for 2000Selected from 270 Proposals

Pennsylvania State

Northwestern

Arizona State (#1)

UCLA

Wayne State University

Arizona State (#2)

Tennessee--Knoxville

Virginia Tech

University of California - Santa Barbara

University of Utah University of California - Berkeley

LSU

University of California - San Diego

North Carolina State

Purdue

Carnegie-Mellon

University of Washington

University of Colorado - Boulder

George Washington University

>100 Sites total: see http://www.igert.org

Other IGERT’s Span NSF’s Incredibly Wide Range of Science Interests

• University of Wisconsin – Madison Human Dimensions of Social and Aquatic System Interactions

• University of Washington Astrobiology: Life in and beyond Earth's Solar System

• University of California—Santa Barbara Advanced Optical Materials

• $3 Million/5 years• All $$$ to students• No $$$ for faculty• No $$$ for postdocs • Only 8% indirect • Requires that much & more in matching• Requires “creativity” to use funds efficiently• Requires very creative educational approach

Characteristics of all IGERT’s

LSU’s IGERTTeaching Craft for Macromolecular Creativity

• The first IGERT in Macromolecules • An experiment in graduate

education.• Departments: Biology, Chemistry,

Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Textiles, Veterinary Medicine, Education

CMC - IGERT • Of course there is great research--but everyone

has this!• Teaching Innovations • Apprentice/Artisan/Craftsperson Ladder• Hands First: integrate lecture, lab, demo, seminar, co-op

experience• Ethics training plus community service• Faculty as researchers, not financiers of research• Faculty teams fund high-risk projects neither could do alone• Faculty work with students side-by-side • Integrated, multi-department, lab/lecture 4-course curriculum• Minigrants / Finishing School / Off-campus Advisors• Off-campus: MPI-Mainz, Turkey, Brazil, Japan

Selected Macromolecular Capabilities

SLS/DLS(2) GPC/LS/Vis(3) DOSY(2)

Kawabata Rheometer DSC (3)

TGA/DTA DMTA TGA/SS

Epifluorescence Polarizing Confocal(2)

Analytical Ultracentrifuge

Supercritical Extraction

Surface Pressure

MALDI-TOF Mixing Extrusion

Densitometer Porosimeter SAXS

More: http://msg.lsu.edu/equip.html

And that’s just at LSU. We now have APTEC

•Grambling: positron annihilation/free volume •LaTech: organized multilayers•McNeese: gas diffusion, anionic polymerization•Southeastern: GPC/LS/Vis•UL--Lafayette: rapid prototype & physical properties•UNO: fluorescence•Southern: composites testing•Tulane: rheology, thermal, scattering

If it needs doing, and involves polymers, it can almost surely be done in Louisiana.

IGERT Students Do More

• Work in a team• Off-campus

participant• Four core technical

courses• Ethics/Community

Service

• Yes you WILL attend seminar

• Reports to our statistician

• Lab books done right

• Take a bigger role in defining your project

IGERT Students Get More!

• $15,000 NSF Stipend

• Plus Tuition• Teach on top of

that if you want• Industrial co-ops

• Actual time working side-by-side with faculty

• Minithesis in 2 months

• Minigrants• Pre-doc

$27,500--------

$30,000--------

CMC-IGERT Faculty & Projects

• 14 participants, all externally funded. • Others welcome! (Several added already)• $5 Million Annual Research. • NSF, NIH, DOD, etc. • Basic & applied research.• Good industrial & other off-campus contacts.• Biomedical to genomics to polyolefins, but all

require common knowledge of large molecules.• Shared equipment.• Willing to work in teams.

Projects such as...

Rods in supercrit fluids Chem/ChE/Physics MPI Germany & Wyo.

Composites Chem/ME Southern U.

Alzheimer’s Chem/Bio MIT, Wisconsin, NIH,NHFML

ProteinStructure/Function

Chem/Bio/Phys

Complex Fluids Chem/Chem/PhysicsPhysical & Polymer

CAMD, Stanford,Brookhaven

Molecular Recognition Chem/Chem Synth &Analytical

Dupont

Drilling muds/Environment/Composites

Chem/ChE Schlumberger

Many more projects at: http://macro.lsu.edu/igert

OR INVENT YOUR OWN!

HISTORY & ENGLISH MAJORS DO.

Impressions from this educational experiment, some good and some troublesome

How it sometimes seems students want us to teach them.

Leuven, Belgium

GETncm/justsaycust-recrate-itemcommunittg/stores/dtg/stores/d-favorite-listruejust-say-no

What we give them instead.

Polymer processing tour at ExxonMobil Chem 4010 = MS-I

STSC class. Teamwork meets its limits.

Class has doubled! This year’s tour was 24 students.

Science & Technology in Service to the Community http://macro.lsu.edu/stsc

Ethics Training Backlash

Students are a little blurry on why they have to hear lectures on legal aspects of sci-tech, but they enjoy this subject.

STSC

William Daly, polymer scientist and occasional professional consultant, lectures on:

•property infringement•tax liability•when to tell a lawyer “no”•when a student sues us

Sample Minigrants

Subject OutcomeGrant-writing workshop “PolyCommunity” non-profit corporation???

Langmuir imprinting Supports NSF-CAREER grantee in new direction

Preliminary data for new grant at Dupont/Univ. of Delaware

Grant submitted

Summer at NRL Student quit graduate school

Experimental flow test apparatus

Simulation expert built apparatus with own hands

Set of tools like that at SAXS line

Real tools in that lab

Manifold for organic synthesis Badly needed manifold for organic reactions in a lab where synthesis equipment was dated

SAXS at Tsukuba 2 students to Tsukuba, Japan

Travel to NIST for SANS Students learn contrast matching—new capabilities for that research. Survive the drive home after snowstorm.

Build machine not commercially available.

Still under consideration—likely will require cost sharing plus teaching/outreach component.

Global Friendships & Portuguese CD’s

Ties to regular track Ph.D.

students and undergraduates

Recruiting can be fun

Integrative Training: DIY Legacy Building

Problem 4. A few weeks ago, Professor George Newkome of the University of Akron lectured on self-assembling hexaruthenium terpyridyl clusters. A sample molecule appears below:

Shortly after his return to Akron, Dr. Newkome sent a related sample that we took to Laboratorio Nacional Luz Sincotron (LNLS) in Campinas, Brazil, where small angle X-ray measurements were made. You can download a typical SAXS data file at:

Does the presence of Ruthenium aid or interfere with SAXS? Guesstimate the size of the molecule from the drawing above, using what you

know about C-C bonds, the diameter of benzene rings, etc. Analyze the SAXS data by the method of Guinier to obtain the radius of gyration,

Rg. There are 3 columns of numbers: q in inverse Angstroms, intensity I, and uncertainty in I. For the present purpose, you can ignore the uncertainty.

How does the Rg value compare to the "ring" diameter for this self assembly? Would you expect Rg from SANS to be the same, larger or smaller? Estimate the translational diffusion coefficient of the molecule. Do you think the real translational diffusion coefficient will be larger or smaller

than your estimate? Estimate the rotational diffusion coefficient of the molecule. Would it be possible to measure Drot by polarized (as opposed to depolarized)

light scattering? Would it make sense to do zero angle depolarized dynamic light scattering on the

molecule? These data on a novel synthetic material are less than one week old so this problem provides, just in time for summer, a natural transition to real research.

Integrative Training•Visitor’s seminar•Collaboration established•SAXS trip to Brazil•Analyze data for team exam•All in one month

Macromolecular Systems II, Homework #3 (shortened) Our group and some others here are getting into DOSY and Prof. Butler wants a friendly CONTIN, like our ANSCAN. Some translation is needed, but of course the two programs are totally unconnected. Butler's program is on a Mac (what else?) and gives output that looks like this: PS2150_500_31_2 7.2122 ppm Polystyrene containing MW standards of 500 and 2150 298 K 1.00000000E-03 % little delta (seconds) 1.00000000E-01 % big delta (seconds) g(gauss/cm) q^2(big_delta - little_delta/3) expt_signal 6.65000000E-01 4.40750917E-02 1.00000000E+02 1.66200000E+00 2.75303652E-01 9.88369747E+01 2.65900000E+00 7.04671340E-01 9.57348015E+01 3.65500000E+00 1.33144949E+00 9.25603053E+01 4.65200000E+00 2.15689670E+00 8.80876912E+01

(etc. you can download the whole file later) Write a limber, easy-to-use program (a high school student should be able to use it) that converts Butler's DOSY output to ANSCAN input.

Some header information (7 lines) Then: row after row of G (gauss/cm) Something y(x)

Integrative Training: Semester-long programming assignment aiding inter-group research

What I meant to say

• The most fun I have had as professor.• Students seem to be having fun, too.• Flexible $$$ for an important

experiment. • Revolutionary or weird? Neither! • Resonates with students and (some)

faculty. We are happy to provide copies of the LSU pre-proposal, full proposal, reviewer comments, this presentation, etc.

Coordinator in Action

Coordinator in Action

Summer intern joining REU/Hughes poster session

Working lunch: filling out Milestone and Landmark reports

Images from Brazil

Chillin’ with Stanford scientist while in Brazil

Virtual Infrastructure is Better than None at All

IGERT students today

++

+

+

+

Interdisciplinary Technology (the other IT)

Another IT Example: Internet Scheduler

Web Seminar Sign-up With Negotiation & Length Adjustment

Day Date

Speaker (Enter your

Name: First & Last

Names)

Research Group

Type of Seminar

Title or Subject

Michael Baylis Russo CT

TBA

Email

changde Zhang Daly CT

TBA

Email

Friday 2/20/2004

Elena Loizou

Schmidt CT TBA

Email

Erick Soto Cantu

Russo CT TBA

Email

Jianhong Russo CT TBA

Email

Friday 2/27/2004

Derek Dorman Russo CT

Lipids and Dendrimers

Email

Friday 3/5/2004 Hyuk Yu Russo FT Polymer Scaling

Email

Stuff that gets integratedSeminars Research ”Live” Problem SetsVisitors Evaluation ProgramLearning Teaching Answer KeysPeople Teams Social interactionsResearch Recruiting OutreachResearch Curriculum Development

Student Leadership Website Building Meeting organization.

Research Evaluation LSU Administration Involvement Interdisciplinary Technology Development

L U

Conclusions• Preliminarily, it seems:

• Very strong students really prosper and do exercise creativity.

• Weaker students sometimes wipe out—not sure if that’s a program fault or just student-advisor personality mismatches, not sure if the rate is higher than in traditional support programs.

• Medium students who try hard will probably get more out of this program than through traditional training.

• Faculty involvement: tied to $$$ and/or renewal.

• Teams harder to construct than originally expected—partly, this is a timing issue.

• Apprenticeship works, but hard to enforce.

Conclusions and questions• Core courses growing, steadily improving,

steadily involving ex-students to shape it.• Flexibility to $$$ is the key.• Will students avail themselves to the pre-

doc experience? If so, will that help their long-term career?

• Will all the extracurricular activities—what might be called holistic training—interfere with technical depth?

• This program is a nightmare to administrate, but many student-involved activities are creating “automatic good behavior” patterns—i.e., traditions.

• There remain challenges to university infrastructure in order to do this right.