 |
WASHINGTON, April 8, 2004 — Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., is working on legislation aimed at helping to fill the gap between federal nanotechnology research and efforts to bring new nanotech advancements to market.
The bill, which Honda is still in the process of drafting, would create a public-private partnership to address what Honda sees as the funding gap between nanotechnology research and commercialization. The bill would create a nanomanufacturing corporation within the Department of Commerce that would oversee this partnership. The legislation would authorize $750 million for this partnership and would be complemented by a $250 million investment from the private sector.
Honda is still in the process of seeking advice from scientists and others on such issues as what “parameters would make such a program attractive to private investors,” according to spokesman Jay Staunton, who said he did not know when Honda may introduce the legislation.
 |
Honda introduced legislation last year that called for creation of a board to advise the president on nanotech issues. A similar provision was included in nanotech legislation enacted late last year.
When asked whether current government programs such as the Commerce Department’s Advanced Technology Program (ATP) already provide similar help to what would be created under Honda’s new bill, Staunton said ATP “may not be specific enough for nanotech.”
The program was conceived as a pseudo-VC firm for the federal government, focusing on emerging technologies that were too risky for private investors, but held great promise for commercialization and society.
But some industry representatives say that given the politics surrounding the program since its creation and the yearly effort by critics in Congress to kill it, companies looking for help in commercializing promising nano-related breakthroughs can’t count on the program surviving in years to come.
President Bush did not propose any funding for the program in his fiscal year 2005 budget proposal. And Josh Wolfe, managing partner for Lux Capital, a nanotech venture capital firm, said he believes the ATP program “for all intents and purposes is dead.”
Still, he said there is a need for something like the public-partnership envisioned in Honda’s upcoming bill to fill the void. “There will be far more science created from the nanotech bill (passed last year) than there will be companies that will be founded” to take advantage of the research, Wolfe said.
He said while venture capital companies will help bring the most promising technologies to market, “there are technologies that will be left on the shelf (that)…could also come to market and create jobs and improve lives.”