Steve Collins

Written by: Natalie Phillips on December 3, 2008 at 4:02 pm

Natalie Phillips
Staff Writer

A smile spread across Dr. Steve Collins’ face as he and his team looked upon their completed research project, a program developing fuel powered artificial muscles for robotic soldiers.

Collins was once a LHS student, and is a class graduate of 1989. He is now working at the NanoTech Institute, a nanotechnology research center.

“If the NanoTech Institute was a company, I would be vice president and CFO,” Collins said. “Besides being a staff scientist, I run the day to day operations of the institute, and am physically responsible for budgeting, planning, and reporting to our funding agencies.”

Although Collins may now have a job requires leadership and also entails a great deal of responsibility, he didn’t start out there.

“I started working as a postdoctoral researcher with Ray Baughmen when he came to UTD in the fall of 2001,” Collins said. “At that time I was a new Ph.D. graduate and was afforded an extraordinary opportunity to work in the newly formed NanoTech Institute at UTD.”

In less then twenty years, Collins has worked with men and women from countries around the world, such as Italy, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, China, Uzbekistan and many others on nanotechnology projects for the Army, Navy, NASA and many other organizations.

“At any given time we are working on a variety of programs, most of them dealing with novel ways to store and harvest energy,” Collins said. “The bulk of our research funding comes from agencies like NASA, DOD, DOE, and the Air Force, so while I can’t say much about the specifics of our research, I will say it is never dull and it is always cutting edge.”

Collins and his team work on projects that little kids often dream up, like the robotic soldiers, or one of their new projects, the robotic jellyfish.

“We are currently working on robotic jellyfish for the Navy, which can roam the oceans of the world collecting useful information,” Collins said.

Although he works on many projects such as the jellyfish and robotics, Collins is also working on nanotechnology projects that will hopefully help improve the economy as well.

“Well, you don’t have to look much further than the gas pump to see we are having somewhat of an energy crisis,” Collins said. “Increasing the efficiency of fuel cells and solar cells, storing and using hydrogen as a fuel source, and building better batteries are becoming increasingly more important.”

Although the research projects are the main part of Collins’ job, he also hopes to teach and inspire the younger generation of scientists to come.

“We are a university based research institute, so our fundamental goal is to train the next generation of scientists and engineers,” Collins said. “We work to function as an engine of economic and scientific growth that eliminates the normal disciplinary barriers that impede the transition from fundamental science to technology.”

Collins recommends students wishing to work in this field to study many different topics in school, not just sciences.

“Students wanting to work in nanotechnology should study biology, physics, chemistry, engineering, material science, and even business in undergraduate school,” Collins said. “Nanotechnology is all about the “size” of what we are working on, and not particularly the “what”.”