Nano’s path to the White House paved with experts and acronyms

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23, 2003 — Lawmakers failed to squeeze in nanotechnology legislation before their annual recess last month, but that doesn’t mean all small things were swatted aside in Washington.

As Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Commerce Committee, placed the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act on the back burner, the White House released a list of nanotechnology leaders who will stage dive into the mosh pit of nanotechnology advisers that already surround the Oval Office.

Pardon the following acronym assault, but here’s the chain of nanotechnology advice that leads from the laboratory to Pennsylvania Avenue:

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  • The White House gets its science and technology advice from the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP);
  • OSTP drills down for more advice through a number of bodies, including the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST);
  • PCAST, charged with doling out advice to OSTP, first broke into separate nanotechnology committees, then decided it needed more depth. So it put together the Nanotechnology Technical Advisory Group, which for some reason went with the acronym TAG.
  • It’s a star-studded lineup, this list of TAG members: Richard Smalley at Rice University; Samuel Stupp at Northwestern University; Harvard’s George Whitesides; MIT’s Angela Belcher; and Stanley Williams at Hewlett-Packard. In all, 35 of nanotechnology’s luminaries sit on the committee. In August, they were preparing for a busy autumn.

“One of the things I hope to accomplish is to try to define what I’m going to call grand challenges,” said Dennis Wilson, founder of Nanotechnologies Inc. in Austin, Texas. Telescoping some nanotechnology research and development around a specific goal, he said, would help avoid “a lot of R&D going in circles.”

Wilson said TAG members are filling out questionnaires that ask what sort of near-term (less than five years) products could result from a coordinated research program and what products could be realized after 10-20 years of focused research.

“Everybody right now has a narrow view of this field,” Wilson said. “We’re going to put all of this information together and collectively look at it and prioritize programs.”

MIT professor Angela Belcher said she agreed to join TAG because “it’s impossible not to be interested in (public) policy as it relates to cutting-edge research.” She sees herself as a resource for PCAST, giving advice about bionanoscience and bionanomaterials. “I’m very interested in the basic science aspect all the way through the transition to technology,” she said.

Mark Modzelewski, NanoBusiness Alliance executive director and a TAG member, hopes to contribute his view that “nanotechnology is hitting the commercial markets, so it’s not just science for science’s sake.”

“The taxpayers are paying for it,” he said. “The nanotechnology industry needs to deliver. We are getting the second-biggest investment in science — the first was the Apollo space mission — and it needs to deliver tangible results.”

PCAST was set to hold its next meeting in September, the same time the World Nano-Economic Congress is held in Washington.

Meanwhile, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is getting ready to unveil a nanotechnology education program. Mike Roco, director of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, said the program will develop centers for learning and teaching nanotechnology, create nanoscale science and engineering education programs, come up with instructional materials for students in grades 7-12 and introduce nanotechnology undergraduate education in college science students’ sophomore and junior years.

The NSF plans to hold a workshop at the end of September to “present the vision that we have for systemic change in education in this field, and to bring the communities in research and education together and provide opportunities for them to collaborate, to form partnerships,” Roco said. Next year, he said, they hope to develop new nanotechnology materials for elementary school children.

“This is a part of a broader picture of preparing the infrastructure for nanotechnology,” Roco said.

As for the nanotech bill in Congress, Modzelewski said it’s in “great shape.”

“It will be back in the fall without any problem,” he said. “It’s not a priority, like homeland defense or fixing retirement. People can’t get such tunnel vision in nanotechnology. We’re not a big focus in Washington. Technology isn’t a big deal in Washington. There are far more people who know about hog farms and textiles than people who will ever know about the Internet or nanotechnology.”

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