Computational electronics and 21^st century education

The continued scaling of semiconductor devices and the difficulties associated with time and cost of manufacturing these novel device design has been the primary driving force for the significantly increased interest in Computational Electronics which now, in addition to theory and experiments, is being considered as a third important mode in the design and development of novel nanoscale devices. In addition to its significant role in industrial research, modeling and simulation also brings into the picture alternative education modes in which students, by running certain subset of tools that, for example, the nanoHUB offers, can get hands-on experience on the operation of nanoscale devices and can also look into the variation of internal variables that can not be measured experimentally, like the spatial variation of the electron density in the channel in the pre- and post-pichoff regime of operation, electric field profiles which can be used to tailor the electron density to avoid junction breakdown, etc. In summary, Computational Electronics is emerging as a very important field for future device design in both industry and academia.