The National Nanotechnology Research Center - UNAM
Bilkent University
Since its establishment, UNAM driven by excellence in science and technology at Bilkent has been serving several hundreds of scientists, researchers and students (currently over 800) both for on-campus and out-of-campus R&D communities in the fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology. With a strong group of faculty members (Principal Investigators of over 35) at its Institute of Materials Science and Nanotechnology, UNAM educates and trains quality researchers and experts through multidisciplinary graduate programs with a strong focus on MS+PhD and integrated PhD degrees. Housing worldclass infrastructure, UNAM provides an open R&D environment to facilitate and incubate cutting-edge innovative technology development.
Introduction UNAM was established at Bilkent University in Ankara, which is one of the top ranking research universities in Turkey, in 2007. With close to 40 Bilkent research groups using facilities at UNAM supported by a professional technical support staff (a total of 15 UNAM and project engineers and 5 lab technicians) and a professional administration support office (of 7 specialists and coordinator). UNAM has been mainly supported by the Ministry of Development of Turkey (in addition to other national and international supports) and managed by Bilkent University.
It is a multidisciplinary organization and houses over 70 laboratories active in nanoscience and nanotechnology research, along with a shared facility and lab infrastructure (with a total lab space of 9200 m2 and cleanroom environment of 400 m2). UNAM attracts a large volume of competitive external funding locally and internationally along with national and global collaborators.
With and for national and international partners, UNAM offers:
• excellence in science and technology,
• worldclass R&D environment and infrastructure, and
• PhD degree with global opportunities.
Sector & Main Activities UNAM is involved in R&D activities in a wide variety of disciplines (materials science, energy research, optics, photonics, electronics, mechanics, health, etc.).
UNAM carries out professional research targeting to develop new technologies, and trains researchers and experts through the Materials Science and Nanotechnology - MSN Graduate Program. UNAM organizes national and international workshops and conferences. UNAM creates a platform for the exchange of know-how and joint work with Turkish and international scientists abroad. As part of outreach, UNAM also contributes to preparation of public media programs, scientific magazines and newspapers for public education about nanoscience and nanotechnology.
Area of expertise UNAM is specialized in nanomaterials, computational nanoscience, nanophotonics, optics and lasers, energy, supramolecular chemistry, nanotextile, nanobiotechnology and synthetic biology.
Achievements UNAM offers Master of Science (MS) and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degrees under MSN program at Bilkent University. As of 2015, MSN program has 54 PhD students, 50 MS students, and 40 post-doctoral fellows. Additionally 155 research students from other degree programs are also working at UNAM.
Currently, there are over 15 companies using the UNAM infrastructure on a regular basis. The total number of users exceeds 800 as of 2015, 250 of which users were from industry. Over the past five years, UNAM researchers have published more than 700 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals including Nature Materials, Nature Photonics, Nano Letters, PNAS, Angewandte Chemie, Advanced Materials, ACS Nano, Lab on a Chip, Nanoscale, Small, and Advanced Functional Materials. In 2015, UNAM published over 150 SCI journal articles.
Thus far, UNAM has completed 149 projects with a total funding of over US$ 40 million. As of 2015, there are 58 active projects running at UNAM with a total budget of around US$ 25 million. Through these competitive projects, UNAM has trained over 450 highly qualified experts. Also, establishing an online reservation system, UNAM-IS (information system), the facility has been made available 24/7 to internal/external users.
