BOSTON, Feb. 19, 2003 — Three New England universities are ganging up on the National Science Foundation in an unusual joint effort to land a federally supported nanomanufacturing research center that they hope will be a tonic to the local nanotech industry.
Northeastern University, the University of New Hampshire and the University of Massachusetts Lowell have pooled their resources to try to convince NSF officials that they should be the site of the agency’s next Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center. Management of the center would be divided equally among the three schools — which, individually, would not stand a chance with the NSF.
“We bring complementary skills to each other,” said Ahmed Busnaina, director of Northeastern’s Nanomanufacturing Research Institute and a strong supporter of the effort. “Each one needs the others or this wouldn’t get done.”
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All three schools already have faculty exploring nanotech, but in decidedly different fields: UNH in surface chemistry and organic chemistry; UMass Lowell in polymer engineering and bulk materials assembly; Northeastern in nanowires, guided self-assembly and photonics.
The schools also focus heavily on collaboration with local industry. Officials hope they can convince the NSF that the approach is worth federal support. “Our strength overall is that we’ve got so many different people working on this,” said Glen Miller, an organic chemistry professor at UNH and that school’s chief representative for the NSEC proposal.
The schools have big plans for local nanotech businesses’ participation if they win the NSEC grant, Busnaina said. He hopes that faculty and corporate researchers will collaborate and students will do internships at local nanotech businesses. And since the NSEC researchers will be working on nanoscale manufacturing methods, they’ll need test subjects for the new technologies they develop.
“We really can’t do this without collaborating with local companies. We expect good support from industry,” Busnaina said.
The schools already have ties to tech heavyweights such as General Electric Co., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Motorola Inc., as well as smaller local companies such as Triton Systems Inc. and Konarka Technologies, which both use nanotech in their businesses.
George Kachen, vice president of business development at Triton Systems in Chelmsford, Mass., said a nanomanufacturing center would be “very useful” because local nanotech ventures are struggling to convert research into practical development. “We have a lot of capabilities in labs and intellectual capital,” he said. “To have a center focused on manufacturing is a key fundamental.”
Kachen also said that while student internships and faculty-business collaborations are good, an NSEC center is also vital simply because the Boston area still needs federal research dollars; businesses cannot yet explore the full advantage of nanotech on their own. “There is competition for nano-dollars. … If a lot of that goes elsewhere, we have to make sure we have these collaborative approaches” to make the most of what federal dollars do come to Boston.
That competition for funding is a subject dear to many local nanotech executives, who fret that the region does not do all it should to stay at the forefront of technology development. A steady stream of people said as much at a recent meeting of the Massachusetts Nanotechnology Initiative. The Boston area has plenty of bright ideas thanks to its universities and skilled work force, they said, but what it really needs is investment capital to unlock the potential of those ideas — and soon, before other regions do it first.
“As a state, we have failed to maintain a focus on creating new technologies,” said Dan McGahn, general manager of Hyperion Catalysis International Inc., a Cambridge company that manufactures carbon nanotubes.
The NSF already funds six NSEC centers across the country, including one based at nearby Harvard University. None, however, focus specifically on nanomanufacturing and none are organized in such a split-campus fashion; typically they have one flagship university, with other schools collaborating as necessary.
The three-school project is one of nine semifinalists under consideration by the NSF for funding in fiscal 2004. The list will be pared down to four by March and Busnaina expects a final decision by July. The NSF is likely to fund two centers, although that is not certain since Congress has yet to set the 2004 budget.
Mike Roco, who chairs the NSEC program for the NSF, did not comment on the prospects for the schools’ proposal but said he has no problem with their joint approach. “We encourage partnerships,” he said. He declined to name the other eight semifinalists, saying NSF policy is to keep the names of all entrants confidential.
The grant will be $2.5 million to $3 million per year for five years, with a possible extension to 10 years. The schools must provide matching funds of at least 10 percent, but Busnaina expects the three to provide closer to 20 percent. Northeastern in particular also has a $2 million gift from an alumni slated for nanotech, and has committed $750,000 of its own money to the science already.