For two days in July, PREM Day turned the trip between San Marcos and Austin into something of a traveling materials science community.
Across the two days, PREM Day drew roughly 54 attendees from Texas State University, Northern Arizona University/Pasadena City College, and The University of Texas at Austin who gathered July 16–17 for PREM Day, traveling between San Marcos and Austin for lab tours, hands-on learning, research conversations, and opportunities to connect beyond their home institutions.
At Texas State, Yoichi Miyahara, associate professor of physics, and his students led a workshop on atomic force microscopy and NanoFrazor nanolithography, while visitors toured PREM CIMA labs and materials characterization facilities. Students also heard from three Texas State and UT Austin alumni who have gone on to careers in industry: Gabriel Cossio, founder and CEO of Nanoscale Labs; Kushal Thapa, a research scientist at Southwest Research Institute; and Shang-Hsuan (Andy) Wu of Tokyo Electron.
But some of the most memorable conversations happened outside the formal sessions.
“I got to have easy going conversations with people who I’d never get to talk to in person otherwise,” says Texas State undergraduate Braden Oddo. “I wanted them to know I’m not just a student; I’m a person too.”
PREM Day continued at UT Austin the following day, where lab tours and a poster session gave students a chance to share their work and see what others across the PREM community were studying. For NAU Ph.D. student Ashley Martinez, the event also helped sharpen her career plans. “The lab tours and poster session helped me brainstorm additional experiments and collaboration opportunities that could advance and support my research at my home institution!”
For community college students, simply being part of that research environment can have an impact. Jared Ashcroft, director of the Micro Nano Technology Education Center and a professor at Pasadena City College, says visiting advanced labs and meeting university researchers gives students a firsthand look at opportunities available after they transfer. Presenting their own research can be especially powerful, he says, helping students gain confidence and begin to see themselves as future researchers and STEM professionals.
The connections extend beyond students. Gabriel Montaño, director of ¡MIRA! at Northern Arizona University, says bringing NAU and PCC faculty and students together with colleagues at UT Austin and Texas State strengthens relationships across the PREM-MRSEC community — and often leaves participants energized to build on the research and collaborations that emerge.
Those relationships have been several years in the making. PREM Day began in 2022 as a collaboration between the Center for Dynamics and Control of Materials MRSEC and PREM CIMA and has since expanded to include ¡MIRA! PREM and Pasadena Community College, says Risa Hartman, CDCM Education & Outreach Program Director. Over time, the event has become a way to deepen institutional ties while creating professional development and new research opportunities for students.
Those kinds of connections are precisely the point, says Texas State PREM CIMA PI Tania Betancourt. “Among the factors that make these types of meetings a success, professional networking and research collaborations are the most critical ones.”
PREM Day offered both — with room for new ideas, new contacts, and potentially new collaborations to follow.