July 13, 2015 – The Surface Science Lab (SSL) recently hosted a group of high school seniors participating in the Idaho Science and Aerospace Scholars (ISAS) program. In addition to visiting Boise State, the ISAS students toured HP’s and Micron’s Boise locations, visited the NASA Ames Research Center in California for two days, met several astronauts including Barbara Morgan, Boise State’s Distinguished Educator in Residence, and planned a mission to Mars. The SSL supports research in the Nanoscale Materials & Device Group (NMDG), as well as several other research programs at Boise State and beyond. The primary instruments used in the SSL are three Bruker atomic force microscopes (AFMs), which allow researchers to see surfaces at the nanometer scale. Currently, the SSL employs a team of two undergraduate researchers to assist the SSL Manager, Dr. Paul Davis, in performing research, training, and equipment maintenance. Pictured is one of those undergraduate researchers, Katie Yocham, who is showing the students a working model of an AFM constructed using LEGOs. The LEGO AFM is controlled by a combination of LEGO Mindstorms controllers and National Instruments LabView code. Both Katie and her fellow undergraduate researcher, Kari Livingston, are Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering majors partially supported by an NSF STEP grant.