USC Camp Gives High School Students a Taste of Bionanotechnology

Nineteen high school students from across South Carolina and one from Martinez, Georgia are spending the week at the University of South Carolina to learn about and get hands-on experience in the new field of bionanotechnology. It combines biology with nanotechnology, which is engineering things at a microscopic level.

The students are working in labs, making fuel cells and learning about the current applications of bionanotechnology, like clothing that has silver nano-particles embedded that prevent bacteria and microbes. USC is doing research on a tobacco virus to see if the plant can be used as a renewable fuel source.

Ash Abel, a student at Southside Christian in Simpsonville, says he came to the camp to explore the field. “Just a job opportunity. Like looking, maybe I would want to do this in the future as a career option, just to get to know it better, see if it’s what I would like to do,“ he says.

Dr. Tom Vogt, director of USC’s Nanocenter, says it’s a field that has a lot of potential growth, creating high-tech jobs across the state. “This is a statewide effort. There is the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, which will benefit tremendously from nano-enabled products that’ll occur, in particular in medicine. Clemson University, I think cars are going to have more and more materials that are nano-materials for energy recovery,“ he says.

He says one of the main goals of the camp is to get high school students excited about science and engineering. “You will not go into this career if you just see this as a job, as something you’re going to do between 9 and 5. This is a calling. Science and engineering has always been a calling and you need to be excited. And I hope that’s what we provide with these kind of courses,“ he says.