Community College Internships
About
nano@stanford offers hands-on, paid internships for local community college students in the Bay Area. Learn how small things are made and seen at the nanoscale and microscale! The nano facilities are used for cutting edge research in areas including electronics, MEMS, optics, physics, biology/biotechnology, medicine, and chemistry. Students will work in a cleanroom or mass spectrometry lab to collect and report data, while working with staff to troubleshoot and maintain our facilities. All training will be provided - no prior background or experience is required. (20-week minimum, 8-20 hours/week, runs year-round). Watch our virtual information session for more details!
Application Period
Applications are no longer open for our 2025 Cohort. Please check back for our next round of applications in Summer/ Fall 2025.
Intern Work
Please check out the Intern Instagram account and/or the Recent Intern Work page to learn more about their work at our facilities! Their daily duties include restocking inside/outside the cleanroom and refilling chemicals in the lab as needed. They perform routine monitoring of our tools, specifically those used in dry etching, MOCVD, characterization, photolithography, deposition, furnaces, and PECVD. They have also been working on a variety of projects, including but not limited to:
- Fabrication of pocket wafers that will be made available to lab members, due to popular demand
- Furnace deposition, which aims to ensure that the deposition process and annealing are consistent and uniform for all lab members
- Weekly Fiji 2 depositions using hafnium to monitor the dielectric quality of MOSCAPS (Metal Oxide Semiconductor Capacitators)
- Making Micropillars that explore their applications and the functionality of different sizes (1, 5, 10, 20um). Some applications include: microfluidics, photonics, biomedicine, and sensors.
- MOCVD monitoring of the Aix-200 system to ensure all parameters are in spec, including: checking the MO Source Consumption, performing weekly Rate of Rice Tests, pump monitoring, performing oil changes, filling chillers, performing routine gas mixing system (GMS) pressure checks, and troubleshooting
- Integrating Biology with Nanoscience by exploring DNA chip fabrication for a Microarrays Project
- Creating Hoover Tower wafers using Chromium etchant to etch off the metal. Processes in this project include deposition, sputtering, photolithography, and wet etching.
Outreach Events
Our interns also help out at K-12 education and outreach events - whether it is through giving facility tours, leading activities, or serving on various panels, they are an instrumental part of teaching the next generation about nano!
Conferences
nano@stanford interns attend conferences every year to network and learn more about the growing industry. In 2024, they flew to Washington D.C. to attend TechConnect World Innovation Conference & Expo, an event held annually which brings together professionals from universities, labs, and startups with industry end-users and prospectors. This was the second year that we’ve sent our interns to this conference, and they had a blast! The three-day conference consisted of various keynote talks, sessions, poster presentations, a vendor expo, and more.
Open House
To showcase the work they have been doing in our facilities, our interns present research posters at our annual Open House event. View their posters here!
Intern Alumni
Our interns have been instrumental in shaping our facilities, and their journeys are truly inspiring. While many of them began with little to no experience, their resilience and determination made a lasting impact during their time with us. Some have gone on to pursue further academic endeavors, while others have embarked on successful career paths. Learn more about their stories, internship experiences, and pathways here.
Partners
We partner with the Science Learning Institute (SLI) at Foothill College to offer micro-internships! These shorter experiences have a lower barrier of entry for Foothill College students interested in exploring a suite of STEM areas, including nano!