Aug. 26, 2003 – The National Science Foundation  is awarding two grants worth more than $1 million apiece to study societal implications of nanotechnology, according to a news release.

David Baird, a philosopher at University of South Carolina, leads a team that will set up ongoing talks with people from many points of view, including law, journalism, medicine, humanities, social science and even science fiction. The goal is to get scientists, engineers and scholars thinking about societal and technical problems at the same time.

Sociologist Lynne Zucker and colleagues at University of California, Los Angeles, will study how knowledge about nanotech makes its way from the lab to the marketplace. One of the major products of the study will be an extensive database on small startup firms, and what factors influence how well ideas succeed in the market. The result will be a resource for scientists, journalists and policymakers, the release said.