July 23, 2003 – Presidential candidate Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., stumped for nanotech on the campaign trail Tuesday — calling for a new public-private program to boost the emerging field and visiting Nanosys Inc.’s  Silicon Valley headquarters.

Lieberman said the mission of the partnership, called “NextTech,”  would be to develop and deploy the next generation of advanced manufacturing processes. He sees it as building on the success of International SEMATECH, a consortium of U.S. chipmakers launched in 1987 with federal funding to help restore the nation’s leadership in semiconductor manufacturing.

Lieberman co-sponsored the Senate’s original nanotech bill introduced last year. Similar to one already passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, it would support nano programs at several government agencies, create offices for coordinating efforts and study the emerging technology’s potential effects.