COMMUNITY OUTREACH
The Harlem Center for Quantum Materials (HCQM) is based on the campus of the City College of New York located on the upper west side of Manhattan Island, in the heart of Harlem. The City College of New York (CCNY) is the flagship campus of the City University of New York (CUNY), the largest public university in the United States. It is a very special place; it brings together a community of students from very varied economic and ethnic backgrounds, and has a long history of successful mentoring of minority students from the Harlem community. Today, a resurgence of scientific activity is underway at the CCNY campus with the construction of the new Center for Discovery and Innovation, along with the presence of the NY Structural Biology Center and the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC), which seeks to connect and be part of the thriving revival of the Harlem community. HCQM is a unique component of this scientific rebirth.
HCQM aims to provide an exceptional and exciting opportunity for the Harlem student communities to participate in world-class materials research, through internships in the HCCM PI’s labs, a joint mentorship for the CCNY undergrads, grads and postdocs, and the availability of workshops, courses, and general public events in Materials Science at CCNY. We work with local high schools and middle-schools to provide a STEM pipeline for minority high school students in Harlem into HCQM PIs’ labs through summer internships and other educational outreach activities.
HCQM partners with the strong outreach and recruitment efforts which are at the core of the National Science Foundation (NSF) supported CCNY CREST Center IDEALS and continues to expand and strengthen the educational and outreach programs already in place at the joint Columbia-CCNY NSF MRSEC (PAS3). Presently we have a successful joint summer (REU) programs with PAS3 for research training of undergraduates from CCNY and sister Community Colleges of CUNY and an independent CCNY REU program sponsored by CREST-IDEALS. The collaborative aspects of the HCQM research programs facilitate the visits and exchanges, giving students access to a broad cross-disciplinary exposure at the nexus of materials science, condensed matter physics, photonics, and nanodevices, expanding the reach of STEM education in materials at all levels.
EVENTS
January 13, 2018 - The tours of the science labs in the Center for Discovery and Innovation at the CCNY were a part of the program of American Physical Society Conferences for Undergraduate Women in Physics (APS CUWiP) organized by CCNY and Columbia. See https://cuwip-nyc.github.io/ The HCQM lab tours hosting 81 CUWiP participants were coordinated by Prof. Vinod Menon, with the expert guiding by graduate students and postdocs from the participating PI’s groups.
