March 13, 2003 — Connecticut’s leading nanotechnology researchers gathered for the first time recently to ask a central question that bedevils the state’s small tech industry: Who is this person sitting next to me?
Nearly 100 people met at Yale University last month for the inaugural meeting of the Connecticut Nanotech Initiative. Attendees heard the usual speeches about nanotech’s potential and state officials’ willingness to help where they can. But, organizers say, the meeting performed the much-more-fundamental task of letting the state’s various small tech researchers get to know each other.
Connecticut’s business scene is somewhat unusual in that it is home to several large corporations, such as General Electric Co., General Dynamics Electric Boat and United Technologies Corp., as well as a spate of nanotech-related startups, such as U.S. Nanocorp Inc. and Competitive Technologies Inc. Industry players admit the two disparate groups are often unaware what the other is doing, or what collaboration opportunities might exist.
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“We do have forums to allow that communication, but it really doesn’t serve the needs of the nanotech community,” said Wayne Martino, a New Haven attorney who helped organize last month’s event. “We need the scientific people talking to each other.”
Martino said he first began considering the idea of a Connecticut nanotech forum last spring, while he attended a scientific presentation at Yale. He realized the speaker’s company would be a natural partner for one of his business clients, “and they had no idea each other existed.”
Thomas Vanderspurt, a scientist at United Technologies’ research center in Hartford, agreed that much nanotech research in Connecticut has been under the radar screen so far.
“There’s a lot of energy around the field,” he said. “The quality of research going on here is very high — it just hasn’t been labeled ‘nano.'”
The state ranked 14th in Small Times magazine’s annual small tech regional rankings.
The hotbeds for nanotech research around Connecticut are Yale University, the University of Connecticut, United Technologies and Pfizer Inc., which has a strong research presence in the state. Yale in particular has spun off several life science companies. Paul Fleury, dean of Yale’s engineering school and a strong proponent of a local nanotech forum, sees that intersection of nanotech and bioscience as where Connecticut might carve out a niche for itself.
“That’s one area where Connecticut can be distinctive,” he said. Other local nanotech companies mostly focus on materials science, such as thermal coatings, he said. “There aren’t a lot of small companies yet pursuing ‘active’ nanotech devices” that use carbon nanotubes or optical sensors.
Like many other states across the nation, Connecticut wants to ensure that it gets a share of nanotech’s economic potential as the nascent industry grows. Exactly how to make that happen, state officials aren’t yet sure. But they do want local business and university researchers to have a voice that state officials can hear as Connecticut shapes economic development policy.
Lt. Gov. Jodi Rell, who attended the inaugural meeting, readily admitted that many lawmakers and bureaucrats don’t know what nanotech is and don’t yet grasp its potential in the same way they understand biotech and IT, the state’s main technology industries. “Nanotech is not something you can easily define. It’s not a good visual,” she said.
Rell does believe, however, that with the proper advocacy nanotech can be a priority for state economic development officers. Connecticut pursues a “cluster” approach, using tax breaks and other incentives to encourage small groups of companies to form around major research anchors. One cluster for biotech already exists in New Haven, near Yale.
“This sort of fits right into that,” she said.
Martino said the next likely step for the nanotech group is another, larger professional gathering in April for researchers to find each other. The group hopes to hold such networking events regularly, and may host a scientific symposium sometime this fall.
Anyone interested in the group can visit www.ctnanotech.org, which has contact information for Martino and other organizers.