By Jeff Karoub
Small Times Staff Writer
June 21, 2001 — University of South Carolina researchers hope their work will one day lead to improved fuel cells and higher-octane fuels that use energy more efficiently.
The engine for those new discoveries will be USC’s soon-to-be built NanoCenter. The center will be used to study nanoscience – building structures molecule by molecule.
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| Andrea M. Perez Turner conducts research at the Cornell Nanofabrication Facility, where scientists are working on creating a chip that would help grow cells in brain-damaged patients. CNF photo |
For researchers, it’s about being pioneers in an area that is expected to influence medicine, science and the environment. But for the universities, it’s also about tapping into the public dollars that can help start and operate such programs. Valentine’s office is part of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, which spreads its $400 million budget to several federal agencies that provide money for research and development efforts in the field.
“It’s a frontier science area,” said Rick Adams, who began last week as director of USC’s center and has been a researcher and professor at the university since 1984.
The South Carolina legislature set aside $1 million in seed money and university officials are expecting to get $1 million more to help renovate an old engineering college during the next year. NanoCenter officials have not released final costs of the overall project.
“The university is trying to keep up to date on research, technology and … leading areas for development in the near future,” he said. “We have to get to it.”
Much of the research at these nanolabs is a long way from commercial application, university and government officials said. But ideas like a “lab on a chip,” which can be used to test new drugs on human cells, could be available within the next several years.
University-based research centers receive most of their money from the public sector, he said, but private corporations and venture capitalists are becoming interested, as nanotechnology products get primed for the marketplace.
Two of Japan’s largest firms said Tuesday they planned to invest hundreds of millions in nanotechnology research, according to the Reuters news agency.
Mitsubishi Corp. said it would set up a $100 million venture capital fund in August, with $10 million of that going to nanotech companies specializing in information devices and medical technology, the report said. Mitsui & Co. Ltd. also said it would invest $80 million during the next five years in mass production of miniature products.
Although it’s not common, there are instances where business, government and academia join forces in nanotechnology research and development.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s new Nanotechnology Center in Troy, N.Y., receives annual grants of $1 million from the federal government, $500,000 from the institute itself and $1 million total from such businesses as Eastman Kodak, IBM and Philip Morris Companies Inc.
“I spent a good part of the last year-and-a-half raising those funds,” said Richard W. Siegel, the center’s director. “It’s been fantastic – I had much more success than I ever imagined.”
Siegel said his background has helped him forge bonds with industry. Before coming to Rensselaer six years ago, he worked 21 years as a researcher at Argonne National Laboratories in suburban Chicago. In 1989, he formed Nanophase Technology Corp., which since has become a leader in making industrial quantities of nanoscale materials.
He said his work at Rensselaer, which deals with designing and creating polymer-based nanoscale composites, is not production-oriented, but it will help solve long-term problems for industries.
Valentine said businesses benefit from such partnerships because they often lead to exclusive licenses or other lucrative deals down the road.
Corporations like Eastman Kodak and DuPont are trying to speed up the process by working alongside students at the Cornell Nanofabrication Facility. Firms are charged an hourly rate to use the laboratories, but the findings remain the property of the companies, according to Melanie-Claire Mallison, the facility’s spokeswoman.
In addition to the lab on a chip, the Cornell researchers are working on creating a chip that would help grow cells in brain-damaged patients. Pillars placed on each chip would act as a bridge for neurons to cross over dead brain cells and create new synapses in an effort to regain lost function.
Both projects are several years from commercial applications, Mallison said.
“It’s just incredibly busy here,” she said. “The clean room is constantly packed with users. We have new project requests every day, but it’s sort of a happy problem.”
The gridlock is expected to ease as a result of next week’s groundbreaking of a $60 million high-tech research center that will include the Nanofabrication Facility. Completion is set for 2003.
Governments, states in particular, get involved to meet a broader objective: economic development.
Michigan aims to put itself on the MEMS and microsystems map with its Life Sciences Corridor Initiative, a billion-dollar effort designed to link activity at state research institutions and businesses. Most of that goes either to universities alone or in collaboration with private research facilities.
“Universities are one of the leading places in the state where research and development are taking place,” said Jeff Mason, senior vice president of public affairs for the Michigan Economic Development Corp.
“To have the ability to spin technology out of the university level into the private sector and keep it in this state is critical. We want to keep the brainpower that is being developed at our educational institutions.”
The Nanotechnology Database, a list of leading research centers in the field sponsored by the National Science Foundation, is available at http://itri.loyola.edu/nano/links.htm.
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CONTACT THE AUTHOR:
Jeff Karoub at [email protected] or call 734-994-1106.