The modifications will begin at the higher levels, flow down to the broader lower levels as professors and faculty figure out what works and what doesn't. Louis Martin-Vega of the National Science Foundation believes that the NSF can improve research and education by integrating many levels. What you're going to find, when people start talking about the need to create more integrated disciplines, is that what changes first is not with undergraduates but at the master's level. We're seeing things in the EE areas that were available only at the master's level a few years earlier. It isn't so much that people are swapping their EE degree for one in nanotechnology, but that you will have undergraduate students in electronic engineering who have been exposed to nanotechnology.
Nanotechnology is only one of the fields that is becoming intertwined with electronics.
In some cases, these technologies need microprocessors or other components to be truly effective. But Martin-Vega noted that as electronics becomes increasingly more complex, designers will have to borrow concepts from other fields. Many researchers are already looking at life sciences for ways to continue improving the speed and performance of computer and communication architectures. Martin-Vega feels this trend is destined to gain. That everyone in engineering will be more exposed to life sciences is a no-brainer.