Building connections across the research infrastructure
Summary
- MIT.nano and the Northeast Microelectronics Coalition hosted the 2026 NEMO User Meeting, bringing together 65 representatives from 25 laboratories to discuss connected shared-access research facilities.
- The meeting focused on the NanoFab Equipment Management and Operations (NEMO) system, an open-source platform originally released by NIST in 2018 for managing shared research labs.
- Participants from institutions like Stanford, Columbia, Princeton, and NASA shared extensions addressing tool status, billing, workflow automation, and chemical management.
- MIT.nano also presented Hydra, a new open-source platform designed to connect multiple NEMO installations and make specialized microelectronics capabilities discoverable across facilities in real time.
Why it matters
Open-source lab management platforms and cross-facility discovery tools like NEMO and Hydra streamline microelectronics R&D operations, reducing administrative bottlenecks and improving resource sharing across distributed national laboratories.