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GREENSBORO—Recently, a group of graduate students held their first day of classes at the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering in Greensboro.

The program brings together two separate universities, the University of North Carolina A & T and the University of North Carolina Greensboro. Nanoscience is the study of matter on a microscopic scale. To give you an example, a sheet of paper is 100,000 nanometers thick. The technology is used in everyday items for cellphones, computers, and cars.

The program at the the newly formed joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering is quite unique and can't be found anywhere else on this side of the country.

“Oh definitely not, at least not on the East Coast. I've worked with nano before and I've had to go to Cal Berkeley and the University of Florida, so it's been a long ways to get the same type of facilities,” said nanoscience Ph. D. student Steven Coleman.

Now Coleman, along with 17 other students, have the opportunities they've been seeking.

“We've developed the curriculum and hired the faculty and brought in students and now we're ready to start after a long period of planning. ” said James Ryan, Dean of the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering.

The students use advanced labs to expand their research in subjects like electronics and the medical fields.

“I'd like to think that I'd be able to produce or provide something that might be beneficial to people like I said, either is cancer research or one the advisers I am looking at also does HIV research,” said Richard Vestal, Ph.D. nanoscience student

The school is holding classes at the Gateway University Research Park next door to where their school will be. Construction is underway on the school's building and is set to be finished at the end of 2011.