As many of you know, NanoDays is the NISE Network's annual festival of educational programs about nanoscale science and engineering and its potential impact on the future. Each Spring, hundreds of NISE Net partners across the country plan and host local NanoDays events (find out who participated in NanoDays 2011 here). We in the NISE Net ask that partners hosting events let us know about their experiences by filling out an online NanoDays report.
One of our goals for NanoDays is to encourage local collaborations, so we ask partners if they worked with other organizations on their NanoDays event and to give us a bit of information about those collaborations. I've been going through the reports and am excited to share some of the information we've gathered about these collaborations with all of you (I'm using data as of May 31st, more partners have filled out reports since).
Of the 144 partners that filled out a NanoDays report, 99 reported that they had collaborated with at least one other institution (69%). Most of the institutions that said they collaborated with other institutions collaborated with more than one other institution, which means that overall, those 144 institutions reported a total of more than 215 collaborations.* Of the partners who reported collaborating on NanoDays, just under half reported one collaboration, a quarter reported having collaborated with two institutions, 14% reported collaborating with three institutions, and another 14% reported collaborating with four or more institutions. I've included a chart below of the number of collaborations reported:
I was surprised by how many partners reported multiple collaborators-- more than a third of the total institutions!
* Some partners reported having one primary collaboration, but described working with other institutions in other ways in the description of their events. The collaborations that weren't listed in response to the question about collaborations aren't included in these numbers.