Prospective Students

Welcome to the Department of NanoEngineering (NE) at UC San Diego!

The NE Department was officially established on July 1, 2007 within the Jacobs School of Engineering-- the first Department of Nanoengineering in the country, and the first to be ABET accredited. Nanoengineering is the practice of engineering on the nanoscale, wherein the unique and enabling aspects of a nanoscale material or structure are used to create a device to be utilized by mankind. Nanoengineering concerns itself with controlling matter on the molecular scale and manipulating processes that occur on the scale of nanometers. Nanoengineering is inherently interdisciplinary and often utilizes biochemical processes to create nanoscale materials designed to interact with synthetic inorganic materials. In simpler terms, nanoengineering attempts to manipulate the ‘growth’ of materials on the nanometer scale, mimicking the processes of nature, which could potentially lead to a vast array of revolutionary materials and products that would benefit all other aspects of engineering, technologies, medicine, and everyday life.