To better serve its more than 150,000 users this year, nanoHUB.org is establishing a User Group to serve as a forum to facilitate the exchange of ideas among nanoHUB users.
The inaugural User Group meeting will be Wednesday, December 8, 2010, at the Westin Arlington Gateway hotel in Arlington, Virginia. The meeting will begin at 3:30 p.m., and will be in conjunction with the National Science Foundation's Nanoscale Science and Engineering Grantees Conference.
The meeting topics will be: "150,000 Users and Growing: A nanoHUB.org Overview"; "nanoHUB.org: Real Users and Real Stories"; and "The Future of nanoHUB.org". nanoHUB.org users are invited to attend.
Members of the User Group include representatives from education, research and industry. Insight gathered from the user Group will help guide selection of content, improve the understanding of user needs, and accelerate the evolution of nanoHUB.
In addition, the nanoHUB.org User Group will help create an improved user experience for faculty and students, and enhance learning experiences, said nanoHUB.org director Gerhard Klimeck. "The User Group offers an excellent opportunity for members to interact directly with the nanoHUB.org leadership team," he added.
During the year the group will convene through teleconferences, nanoHUB.org wiki pages, and an annual user conference.
The Network for Computational Nanotechnology is a National Science Foundation infrastructure and research network founded in 2002 with the mission to support and further the National Nanotechnology Initiative by designing, constructing, deploying and operating a national cyber-resource for nanotechnology theory, modeling and simulation. nanoHUB.org is the vehicle to achieve that mission.
NCN currently focuses on four areas: nanoelectronics, nanoelectromechanics, nanophotonics and nano-devices for biology and medicine. The NCN network is Purdue University; University of California, Berkeley; University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign; the Molecular Foundry at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Norfolk State University; Northwestern University; the University of Texas at El Paso; and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.