Session: K9 Panel: Nanoscale Heat Transfer Education

Paper Number: 116787

116787 - Onsite and Online Delivery of Nanoscale Thermal Transport Curriculum 

Nano/microscale heat transfer emerged as an active research field around late 1980s, pioneered by late Professor Chang-Lin Tien along with his mentees and promoted by many distinguished leaders in the heat transfer community. Significant progress has been made in both research and engineering education in this field over the past 30 years. Educational aspects of nanoscale heat transfer can be paid attention at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, such as the development of textbooks, teaching tools, mentorship, and teaching methods.

In this talk, I will particularly focus on the topic of onsite and online delivery of nanoscale thermal transport curriculum. At Purdue we have developed a series of two courses on nanoscale thermal transport, covering the theoretical and computational aspects respectively. The theoretical course covers quantum mechanics and solid state physics basics, phonon dispersion and density of states, thermal conductivity, electronic structure and specific heat, mobility and electrical conductivity, photon density of states, dielectric function, and optical response of materials. The computational course covers lattice dynamics, molecular dynamics, first principles calculations, Boltzmann transport equation, Monte Carlo methods, and machine learning. When the course contents are delivered online, they can have a broad reach to students globally. Moreover, introducing emerging topics to the classroom or undergraduate research experiences, such as energy, climate change, semiconductors, aerospace, are very effective ways of attracting talents.

Presenting Author: Xiulin Ruan purdue