Elsewhere, in the Cesar Chavez Building, graduate student Francisco Baires sits in a windowless office that could have been a closet in a previous life, immersed in a different kind of work: He is sending a statement condemning Arizona's new anti-illegal immigration law to the media and other opponents of Senate Bill 1070.

CNN: Arizona students speak out on immigration law

He and his team of 24 graduate students are the world's leaders in building "nanowires, " whiskers of semiconductors so thin you could bundle 20 million inside a strand of 2-lb.

FORBES: The Titan of the Teensy

As we learned by building the Internet, fiercely competitive teams of research professors, graduate students, engineers, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are the best drivers of technological innovation -- not big corporations, and certainly not government bureaucracies.

WSJ: The New Nuclear Revolution

The main building houses the kitchen and dining area, run by the cheery-eyed Dana Post, a graduate of Denver's School of Culinary Arts, and Michael Carlucci, who managed New York's Montrachet.

FORBES: Riverkeeper