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Egan brings over 20 years of experience in high-technology senior management, marketing, and sales at both large and small firms. Prior to joining Inapac, he served as CEO of Aeluros, a start-up company focused on high-speed, mixed signal PHYs for the communications market. Previously, Egan was GM of Conexant’s Silicon Valley design center, formed after Conexant acquired HotRail Inc. At HotRail, a venture-backed start-up developing multi-gigabit transceivers and switch fabrics, Egan led the sales and marketing efforts. Earlier, he spent 10 years at LSI Logic in a variety of senior roles, including managing LSI’s entry into the SAN space through targeted investments in the nascent Fibre Channel market. Egan also held management positions at Headland Technology, Video Seven, and Nixdorf Computer.

(November 10, 2004) Dallas, Texas&#8212Remaining true to its position in the semiconductor industry, Texas Instruments (TI) announces that it has made significant progress in aligning its products with the European Union’s (EU) Restriction on Use of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) legislation in electrical and electronic equipment.

November 4, 2004 – Scientists from Royal Philips Electronics and the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at Delft U., The Netherlands, claim they’ve achieved the first successful integration of III-V nanowires on germanium and silicon substrates.

Growing a layer over the entire substrate via conventional thin-film deposition and lithography techniques creates lattice and thermal expansion mismatch, preventing epitaxial growth of crystallographic structures essential to material properties such as low interface resistance needed in transistors and LEDs, according to the researchers. So, rather than layering over the entire substrate and removing unneeded parts, the researchers grew indium phosphide nanowires in substrate locations where needed, resulting in many small individual structures, and easier relief of mechanical stress on the substrate.

Key to the process is a vapor-liquid-solid method. After gold seeds are deposited in the substrate using conventional lithography processes, the semiconductor material is applied to the substrate in vapor form, dissolving into the metal seed. The seed becomes oversaturated and grows the material in the form of nanowire starts.

Although Erik Bakkers, senior scientist at Philips Research, acknowledged the process is not new, he explained that this is the first time III-V material has been grown on both germanium and silicon substrates. The research was published in the Nov. 4 issue of the journal Nature Materials.

November 2, 2004 – Inventory corrections are putting a damper on a traditionally strong month for semiconductor sales, but overall growth for the year is about on target with projections, according to the latest data from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA).

Worldwide chip sales in September were $18.41 billion, a 1.0% increase from the previous month and 27.4% higher than September 2003. It’s the fourth consecutive month of shrinking growth rates, and the first time in eight months of less than 30% month-on-month growth. Third-quarter chip sales were $54.66 billion, up 4.8% from $52.16 billion in 2Q and 33.1% from $41.06 billion in 3Q03. Chip sales through the first nine months of 2004 stand at $154.26 billion, 33.8% growth from $115.31 billion during the same period in 2003.

Chip sales during September increased in Asia-Pacific ($7.79 billion, 1.6%) and Europe ($3.35 billion, 4.1%), but decreased in Japan ($3.95 billion, -0.5%) and the Americas ($3.32 billion, -1.7%). Year-on-year, sales were led by Asia-Pacific (38.6%), Japan (17.7%), and Europe (23.4%), which surpassed the Americas region. The three-month moving average of sales shows growth led by Europe (7.2%) and Japan (3.2%), with the Americas about flat (less than 1%).

Demand continues despite evidence of inventory corrections in “a few market areas” that flattened September’s results to “the low end of the historic range,” according to SIA president George Scalise. He added that “stronger than expected” sales of PCs and cell phone handsets contributed to increased sales of microprocessors, DSP, flash memory devices, and DRAMs.

Millipore Corporation announced the appointment of Martin D. Madaus, Ph.D., to President and CEO of Millipore, effective no later than February 1, 2005. Dr. Madaus comes to Millipore from Roche Diagnostics Corporation where he led a $1.9 billion business with 4,000 employees.

Dr. Madaus will assume the role of President and CEO from Francis J. Lunger, who will remain as Chairman of the Board during a transition period. Dr. Madaus will also join Millipore’s Board of Directors.

Dr. Madaus commented: “I’m very excited about joining a company with the reputation and potential of Millipore. The company’s products and technologies are critical to the future of biotechnology and life science research.”

Dr. Robert Bishop, the Lead Director on Millipore’s Board of Directors, commented: “Martin has exceptional technical, business and international experience, and the energy and vision to lead Millipore through its next stage of growth.”

Bishop continued: “During Fran’s tenure as CEO, Millipore divested its microelectronics business, focused on bioscience, revamped its manufacturing strategy and made significant gains in its life sciences and biotech businesses. We are grateful for his many contributions to Millipore.”

Martin D. Madaus was named President and CEO of Roche Diagnostics Corporation in the United States in 2000. Prior to that, he was Vice President of Business Development for Roche Molecular Diagnostics. Madaus came to Roche in 1998 when he was general manager of Boehringer Mannheim Canada in Montreal, Quebec, through the acquisition of Boehringer Mannheim by Roche. From 1989 to 1998, Dr. Madaus worked at Boehringer Mannheim in senior management, sales and marketing, and product management roles both in Germany and the United States.

Dr. Madaus has been a visible spokesperson for the health care industry. He serves on the Board of Directors of AdvaMed and is Chair of its In vitro Diagnostic working committee. He also serves on the Boards of the Institute for Medical Technology, the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership, Biocrossroads, and the Analytical & Life Science Systems Association.

A native of Hamburg, Germany, Dr. Madaus has a Ph.D. in veterinary medicine. He is 45 and will be relocating to the Boston area with his family. He is a U.S. citizen.

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Oct. 26, 2004 – First-time mother Frances Ross didn’t agonize about returning to her managerial position at IBM as her maternity leave neared its close in September. Instead she weighed her scheduling options and found them plentiful.

“They’ve been very flexible,” she said of her associates at the Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. “After the six-week paid leave, I can really decide at the time. I’ll probably take another month or two after that, and then do some part time, and then ease back into it as time goes on.”

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Ross, the head of a six-person team that specializes in unconventional analytical techniques, may temporarily suspend her research on nanostructures to care for her infant daughter. The team, in the meantime, will focus on refining novel approaches to understand the behavior of nanomaterials without her. But she isn’t likely to find her career permanently placed on hold as a consequence.

IBM and other technology corporations that pin their futures on being at the forefront of innovation appear more willing to accommodate women technologists.

Areas such as nanotechnology require a highly trained workforce that can adapt to the challenges inherent in interdisciplinary and less traditional research. The combination of a scarcity of researchers — both men and women — with those skills, and a growing recognition that a diverse workforce better serves a diverse customer base is prompting some companies to step up their recruitment and retention efforts.

Ross, for instance, brings a rare talent to IBM: She uses microscopy and video recording techniques to track in real time the formation of nanomaterials. The project ultimately may help IBM to rapidly and accurately place large volumes of nanoscale components in products such as integrated circuits. As a manager, she also may have a voice in the development of final products that will be marketed to an increasing number of women consumers.

Many companies and advocacy groups agree that the number of women technologists, especially in leadership roles, remains small. But it is growing, and may even accelerate with the opportunities nanotechnology is creating for junior researchers and future generations of scientists.

“There’s this untapped labor pool,” said Nicole Smentek, author of a 2003 report on opportunities and barriers women face in technology corporations. Smentek is a research associate with Catalyst, an organization that promotes the advancement of women in business.

Women made up 48.4 percent of the general labor force in July, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s statistics bureau. While women scientists and engineers don’t come close to that figure, their position has improved.

Women accounted for 24.7 percent of the nonacademic science and engineering workforce in 2000, up from 11.6 percent in 1980, the National Science Foundation http://www.nsf.gov/ reported.

Sharon Nunes, a 20-year employee at IBM and now its vice president of technology, estimated that the percentage of women at IBM who, like her, hold a science or engineering doctorate has shifted from the low teens in 1984 to the high teens now. “I wouldn’t say we’re where we want to be,” she said. “But we’ve seen progress.”

In the pipeline, but on the sidelines

Several organizations have catalogued the difficulties that women face as they try to advance in male-dominated work environments. Problems include exclusionary cultures, balancing home and work demands, stereotyping and a lack of networks and mentors.

Catalyst found yet another set of barriers when it examined the high tech industry. It argued the pipeline issue — the fact that few girls pursue an educational track suitable for a tech career — was only one contributor to low representation.

Companies that believed they based advancement strictly on merit failed to recognize the role professional relationships played in their decisions, or that women sometimes were excluded from those relationships.

Although women’s numbers in technology corporations may be relatively small, their loss can sting if they get frustrated and leave, Smentek said. They may take with them knowledge and skills learned on the job that their replacement will not have.

“Technology corporations know how expensive turnover is,” she said.

More progressive companies have launched initiatives to help identify, develop and retain talented workers. IBM, for instance, periodically invites hundreds of its women technologists to attend a networking and leadership conference, one of several programs that earned it an award from Catalyst.

The Women in Technology thrust plus other leadership development efforts are paying off. IBM reports that the number of women on its executive team has increased by 400 percent since 1995.

“We’ve done a lot to try to get the women’s technical community together and make them feel they are part of our growth and development, which I think certainly we are,” said Nunes, who is co-chair of the upcoming Women in Technology meeting. “I’ve gotten terrific support, all the way up to (IBM’s chief executive officer and chairman) Sam Palmisano.”

Nunes also argues that women workers help the corporation anticipate women customers’ demands. “If we’re developing products for our customers, and we don’t understand what our customers want and need, then we can be off the mark,” Nunes said. “We’ve said this over and over again, mostly in the last 10 years: We need to have a diverse population working here so we can better serve our customers.”

Ascending numbers

 Industry and government alike appear to recognize that the paucity of qualified women scientists and engineers may put the nation and its high tech industries at a competitive disadvantage. They flag in particular a general downward trend of total students pursuing science and engineering degrees in the United States, and larger proportion of those students being foreigners who may return home after their training is complete.

Federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation have earmarked funding for decades to encourage girls in primary and secondary schools to get involved in science and mathematics, with limited success.

The percentage of women earning degrees in the physical sciences grew from 24 percent in 1981 to 41 percent in 2000, according to a review of graduation figures filed by the NSF. The percentage of women getting doctorates in the field more than doubled. A larger percentage of women received bachelor degrees in biology than men in 2000, and women nabbed 45 percent of the doctorates that year.

But engineering remains problematic. Only about 20 percent of undergraduate degrees in engineering went to women in 2000, and 3.7 percent of the doctorates were earned by women. That’s an improvement over the mere 11 percent for bachelor degrees and 0.4 percent for Ph.D.s in 1981.

IBM launched a program in 1999 to not only help fill the pipeline but to ensure the flow would feed into Big Blue. It organized science camps for middle school girls worldwide to encourage them to consider technology careers.

The Watson center was one of 36 sites involved in this summer’s EXploring Interests in Technology and Engineering, or EXCITE, program.

Nanotechnology, with its potential to contribute in everything from computing to health care, could be a draw for the current and future generations of women technologists, Nunes said.

“A huge number of (women) say I want to do something where I feel I’m making a difference in what I do,” she said, based on her experience helping to establish and direct IBM’s life sciences division.

Nanotechnology also may provide a bridge for women whose education lacked the mathematic underpinnings required in some pure sciences, said Ross, who earned a doctorate in materials science. “My suspicion is that like biology, nanotechnology is going to be of much broader interest as well because it doesn’t necessarily have to be based on the things that seem to discourage women, like having to do a lot of mathematics or physics.”

The interdisciplinary nature of nanotechnology, and the need to collaborate, may play into women’s strengths. Emphasizing she was generalizing, Nunes said women provide teamwork, collaboration and mediation skills that allow all parties to win. Those traits help interdisciplinary research but also complement IBM’s overall technology strategy.

“We hire people who have very deep technical skills in one area but very quickly ask them and demand of them that they have to learn about multiple parts of the organization and be able to converse and understand the technologies from other parts of the organization,” Nunes said. “I’m not saying women do it better than men always, but it is a strength.”

Yet those same attributes can hinder advancement if the technologist — man or woman — fails to delineate his or her contribution, Nunes said.

“It’s very easy to say the team did this or the team did that, but if I want to convince someone to hire me, I have to say I was the part of the team that did this, but here’s the part that I led, here’s the piece that I did.”

Ultimately, it may be the presence of women like Nunes, also a material scientist but not a nanotechnologist, who as a mentor and a role model has helped attract and inspire younger colleagues like Ross. Nunes managed to build her career while she and her husband raised two children.

“People like her really give some incentive for people to get into this field. You see how successful she is,” Ross said. “It really depends on the quality of the ideas.”

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Oct. 21, 2004 – Serial entrepreneurs, they’re called. The phrase refers to those who by choice or force leave one venture to start or lead another. Then another. And maybe a few more. It isn’t always pretty, but neither is the business world.

Here, a few of small tech’s survivors provide answers to questions posed by Small Times’ Karoub on the happiness and hazards of their chosen career paths.

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Entrepreneurs include Janusz Bryzek, CTO, chairman and founder, LV Sensors; Charlie Janac, consultant, former Nanomix CEO; Michael Pak, CEO, founder of Nanostellar; and Greg Schmergel, CEO, Nantero.

How do you determine whether lessons from past work experiences are valuable?

BRYZEK: From my perspective, previous experience gives me two key advantages.

Higher probability of success: My first startups were technology driven, while the last ones were market driven.

Increased speed of bringing the new technology to market: At LV Sensors, I plan to have design validation samples of complex, single-chip, very large-scale MEMS integrated wireless devices in six months from company funding, and volume production validation devices fabricated on automotive qualified production line in just 15 months. This speed is not achievable by first-time entrepreneurs.

Over the last year I reviewed about 40 startup business plans by mainly first-time entrepreneurs (performing a due diligence for Silicon Valley top-tier venture capital firms) and the average time to build design validation prototypes ranged from two to six years with very vague plans for production.

JANAC: A new startup company is like a new marriage. Experience is helpful but each new startup has different dynamics. As an entrepreneur, you have to make so many decisions every day that while mostly right, will necessarily include some mistakes.

Experience allows you to predict what will happen and not have to go through the experience of quickly correcting mistakes. It comes down to pattern matching: Does the current situational pattern fit into the current situation so that a better decision is made this time? I pay particular attention to experiences in building and pruning leadership teams, technology development risk and customer deal-making and post-sale satisfaction.

PAK: As an entrepreneur and manager, my key assignments are to close funding, build business relationships with major global enterprises, build a world-class technical and management team, and of course, all aspects of corporate governance.

The key lessons I have learned from my past are to plan and implement aggressive product development, business development and funding strategies, and to create and monitor detailed implementation plans, while monitoring the human energies of my team. That is, product development, business development and funding are all processes that can be planned and managed to a successful conclusion.

However, there is a fine line between getting the most out of myself and my team without exhausting either.

SCHMERGEL: There’s always a danger of applying the wrong lessons from past experience to the current situation, which may be different in important ways. So you have to be able to isolate the key environmental factors that made that past decision a success or failure and figure out if they really apply this time or not.

Otherwise, the same decision that was brilliant last time around might lead you into a crisis this time.

Is there one mistake that has changed the way you make decisions now?

BRYZEK: Three mistakes changed my decision-making process: selection of the startup partners, not filtering customer dreams and underestimating the difficulty of MEMS-based product manufacturing.

JANAC: In one the four entrepreneurial companies I have helped build in my career, I went in as a hired CEO instead of building the company from scratch. The company already had a culture and a problematic strategy. I changed the strategy almost immediately but failed to change the personnel quickly enough to change the culture to match a more business-oriented direction.

You just have to have a team that fits with the CEO and the strategic direction of the company. It was a painful lesson for everyone involved.

PAK: Every successful entrepreneur makes mistakes. We missed the opportunity for a very large-scale payout from a previous enterprise because we had not set our exit goals ahead of time. With Nanostellar, we discuss our goals at the board level every month and we are planning possible liquidity and exit strategies even though we are in the first year of operations.

SCHMERGEL: There isn’t one specific mistake — rather, it’s necessary to learn from every past mistake, major and minor, collectively, to improve current decisions. There are always a hundred paths that lead the wrong way for every one or two that go the right way. That means the hardest part is not as much avoiding the wrong paths but correctly identifying the right one.

Have you found anything unusual or unique about developing small tech?

BRYZEK: To develop a MEMS or nano chip, the team needs to be fluent in multiple disciplines. Most of the MEMS designers come from the electrical engineering field and have no depth in other fields. This dramatically delays the path to commercialization.

To make MEMS-based commercial products, there are a few other stumbling blocks not supported by the existing infrastructure: device packaging, testing and assembly. Each of these tasks requires a significant effort and money, and most of the startups don’t have resources and skills to address these issues correctly.

During the “optical bubble,” about $1 billion was invested by VC firms into MEMS-based startups, and probably another billion or so by the infrastructure vendors. This helps tremendously in the areas of production packaging, testing and assembly, but only in selected MEMS areas. Most of the micro and nano startups will still have to focus internally on these areas.

JANAC: There are a number of differences. Nanotech companies have to do science as well as engineering and manufacturing. Managing the science adds complexity and risk to the whole process of creating a nanotech company. There are management issues in balancing a science culture focused on research, engineering culture focused on creating products and manufacturing culture focused on delivering those products in volume.

Another issue is that the development timeframes are longer then traditional investors feel comfortable with, forcing more complex financial strategies. A nanotech company would have a mix of venture, industrial partnership and government funding, which would be uncommon in a traditional startup. As a result, nanotech companies require more experienced management than other types of startups rather than less.

PAK: Yes, successful small tech today requires a large number of Ph.D.s to work as a team to achieve business goals. It is definitely a challenge to manage our four technical teams — modeling, synthesis, characterization, and test — to work a structured development process to meet business goals against a fixed time schedule.

I am fortunate to have a chief technology officer who is capable of this management task. This allows me to focus on business development, funding and corporate governance.

SCHMERGEL: Developing nanotech is unique in many ways. It requires a very multidisciplinary team: We have 25 people with very little duplication of skills, including chemists, physicists, chemical engineers, materials scientists, semiconductor industry veterans of many kinds. It requires substantial creativity, since it involves doing things no one has done before. You can’t copy or imitate; you really have to innovate.

So that makes it high-risk, but also high-reward, because in exploring new realms at the nanoscale, you can discover many brand new ways to add value.

How would you rate your appetite for risk and how does that influence the career choices you’ve made?

BRYZEK: I have a very high tolerance for risk. In comparison to the escape with my family from communist Poland in 1979, the startup risk pales. Furthermore, I escaped to be free, which for me also meant having no boss.

I would say that these factors very strongly affected my career choices. They enabled me not to fear the uncertainty of startups, but enjoy it.

JANAC: I personally have a high tolerance for risk. When I was 11 years old, my family came to the United States from what is now the Czech Republic with about $300 in our pockets. Switching countries was a risk that worked out great for the young generation, which had its roots firmly planted in the U.S. culture and education system, while being fully aware of the alternatives.

For me, there is nothing better then taking a risk and having it work out. It has led me into three different fields: electronic design automation, semiconductor capital equipment and nanotechnology. At the same time, any fool can take a risk.

The trick is making the risk produce a great result, so one of the key skills of an entrepreneur is risk management. Am I taking the right level of risk? Too little and I will be passed by larger, stronger competitors; too much risk and the objective will not be reached.

PAK: Actually I feel I am in a similar situation to our VCs. I accept a relatively high degree of risk in order to be able to build a world-class and world-scale business.

However, my entrepreneurial/ executive focus is constantly on risk reduction, developing our knowledge base, developing a rational business model and strategies and plans, and implementing our plans at the least cost and in the least time possible and without exhausting myself and my team.

SCHMERGEL: I must have a pretty healthy appetite for risk, otherwise I would have made just about all of my career choices differently. Certainly getting into nanotechnology almost four years ago was not an obvious move. That was well before nanotech had become a buzzword.

Is there a job you could imagine doing for the rest of your life?

BRYZEK: Advising the new startup companies how to start a new business with increased probability of success. I did this last year for about 40 companies and enjoyed it tremendously.

JANAC: I have the greatest admiration for people who can take an idea from startup or early stage and grow it into a large public company over 10 years or more. CEOs I have worked for, such as Joe Costello of Cadence Design Systems and Bob Therrien of Brooks Automation, have done exactly this. However, there are a number of factors working against such a career.

First of all, it is rare to create a lasting public company from scratch. Second, companies change dramatically as they evolve through their various development stages, requiring major changes in skills and even personality of their management teams. At the beginning you are an individual contributor, in the middle you are a decision maker and in later stages you are a resource manager.

These are different skills that explain why so many large company managers fail as startup CEOs and why entrepreneurs have trouble working for large companies. If I could create a company that would be at the forefront of a historical market trend, have a team I love to work with and a set of visionary customers, I would not mind staying with it as long as the company does not outlive my ability to contribute.

PAK: I can imagine growing new emerging technology businesses as an entrepreneur and CEO for the next five to 15 years, and beyond that working as a VC and mentor to entrepreneurs.

Right now, we are at the early adopter phase in the nanotechnology adoption life cycle. As we move into the mature phase and I have a couple of successful nanotechnology companies to my credit, I imagine I will be ready to move more into a funding and advisory role.

SCHMERGEL: I certainly do plan to be an entrepreneur for the rest of my life. That’s the one job I can imagine doing. It must be genetic, since in my family we’ve been entrepreneurs for many generations now!

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Oct. 19, 2004 – It can hover. It can spy. Now, if it can only keep quiet. Honeywell International Inc. successfully completed demonstration flight tests in August for an aerial surveillance vehicle designed to scope out places too dangerous for soldiers. Called an organic air vehicle (OAV), the doughnut-shaped aircraft proved it could take off vertically, dart about, hover over a point of interest, redirect itself and land.

It’s part of a series of unmanned vehicles being developed through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to gather intelligence on enemies without putting lives at risk. Video cameras mounted for forward and downward viewing relay information to military personnel miles away. The OAV also can carry sensors to monitor hazardous materials or mines.

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But keeping the OAV from nose-diving during its aerial acrobatics has been a multiyear challenge for designers. Honeywell drew on its experience with MEMS technology to create a resilient system that can withstand buffeting winds, rain and other jarring conditions.

“It is extremely hard to stabilize,” said Ben Simmons, vice president of Defense and Space Electronic Systems Surface Programs at Honeywell. “MEMS have been a key enabler of the whole technology, with their light weight and small size.”

Honeywell’s MEMS gyros and accelerometers have provided stability and control in products as diverse as aircraft and missiles. The OAV uses a MEMS inertial measurement system along with a global positioning system receiver and a processor for flight management.

The OAV team also needed to develop sophisticated software that would be compatible with the sensor platform, according to Vaughn Fulton, Honeywell’s program manager for unmanned aerial vehicles.

The OAV gets its hovering capability from a fan placed in its center, Fulton said. Tucking the fan blades inside the vehicle improves safety, too, he said. “The key attribute of the ducted fan is thrust, and it’s safer than the three rotors typically employed in a hovering craft,” Fulton said.

Honeywell tested the vehicle at the U.S. Army McKenna Military Operations in Urban Terrain grounds at the Soldier Battlefield Lab in Fort Benning, Ga., and at Honeywell’s facilities in Minneapolis. It functioned in the cold northern climate as well as hot and humid southern weather, Fulton said.

DARPA awarded two $3-million contracts in 2001 to teams led by Morris Township, N.J.-based Honeywell and Micro Craft Inc. in California. The initial program called for a demonstration that the OAV is a viable technology, Fulton said. Honeywell is seeking a second DARPA award to develop a larger and more robust vehicle. Fulton describes the current model as being similar “to a cut-off trash can.”

Engineers still must overcome one hurdle before the OAV can be a contender for the military. The OAV fails as a stealthy device because fan and motor noise announce its approach, giving would-be enemies time to react.

“It’s an acoustics challenge,” Fulton said, but one that his team is prepared to tackle. “It’s an extremely noisy platform.”

Oct. 6, 2004 – Chad Mirkin, Northwestern University professor and co-founder of two nanotech companies, has received a $2.5-million award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), according to a news release.

Mirkin, whose research led to the creation of Chicago-area firms Nanosphere Inc. and NanoInk Inc., was among nine out of 1,350 nominees to receive the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award. The new award is designed to support highly innovative ideas and approaches to critically important scientific questions, the release said.

Among Mirkin’s plans for the cash infusion: explore further applications for his ultra-sensitive protein detection technology first reported in September 2003 issue of the journal Science. His nanoparticle-based biodetection techniques have been licensed to Nanosphere for commercial development in diagnostics and life sciences.

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Oct. 5, 2004 – Although nobody predicts a MEMS sequel to the nanotechnology bill signed into law last year, some small-tech leaders say it is the right time for micro to raise its profile in Washington.

Nanotech’s bigger, older cousin has real revenues coming from major players like Texas Instruments, Analog Devices and Bosch. The industry also has a history of financial and moral support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

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Yet the MEMS industry largely finds itself in the public shadow of nano, a broader and potentially more disruptive technology, said Roger Howe, an engineering professor at University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center.

“We need to manage our MEMS brand,” said Howe, who pressed his case last week at METRIC, a two-day annual meeting of the MEMS Industry Group (MIG) held in Pittsburgh.

“Nano people did a better job lobbying this field. … We need to have that person to reside inside the Beltway.”

Howe said the MEMS industry’s representation in Washington largely has been “volunteer lobbyists,” such as national laboratory or academic leaders who serve posts on a rotating basis, such as DARPA’s program manager for microsystems. While that has helped keep funding flowing for specific projects, it has not brought larger awareness or recognition for microscale solutions among lawmakers.

That could lead to money for major research and development centers and job creation in the legislators’ home districts — both of which have benefited the nano side.

For example, Howe said, MEMS-based sensors might be a research theme for a proposed facility funded by the Department of Homeland Security. A D.C.-based advocate could clearly and effectively communicate the role MEMS could play in such a proposal.

Contrast that with nano, whose trade group has retained the Washington office of law and governmental relations firm Preston Gates & Ellis. One NanoBusiness Alliance official credits the practice for clinching December’s enactment of the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act, which authorized $3.7 billion in federal support for nanotech.

“A lot can be done in Washington,” said Mark Modzelewski, the alliance’s former executive director who now serves on its board and leads its governmental efforts. “Tens of millions of extra dollars could go in the field … mainly because you can point to such areas as homeland defense and electronics.”

While NanoBusiness’s stated mission is to advance both nanotech and microsystems, the latter hasn’t been on its agenda in part because of MIG’s existence, Modzelewski said. Also, the alliance’s expertise has been more in bottom-up manufacturing, as opposed to MEMS’ top-down approaches.

The time is right for MEMS, he said, because nanoscale solutions are going to need real, rugged and reliable platforms, and many experts point to integrated microsystems as the vehicle: “(MEMS) people can come in and seem like the voice of reason, saying ‘This is the bridge (to nanotechnology),'” he said.

Modzelewski said Preston Gates likely would keep fees reasonable for an emerging association like the MEMS Industry Group, as it has for the NanoBusiness Alliance. The reward comes on the back end: Preston Gates now has eight nanotech clients.

Ellen McDevitt, MIG’s managing director, said her group should be doing everything it can to boost awareness as well as commercialization, and governmental relations is part of its charter. She said MIG has held lobbying workshops, and she anticipates future trips to Washington to expand those efforts.

“We want to preach the benefits of the technology, and make sure the lawmakers know of our needs and our benefit,” she said. “But in no way do I want to preach that the MEMS industry needs government funding. “There’s still a lot of ground MEMS can gain in D.C.

There should be local people devoted to keeping the awareness of MEMS. It’s definitely something we have to work on because that is indicative of a mature industry. That’s what we want to be.”

Modzelewski said the real advantage of being covered on Capitol Hill is in knowing that a message is reaching an influential audience.

“There’s the whole educational component — they know to care. … You make a congressman or senator think of their own idea, so to speak,” he said. “It’s not about protecting the industry, but protecting the industry’s issues.”

Howe, a technical adviser to Ardesta LLC, Small Times Media’s parent company, finds comfort knowing that nanotechnology should need MEMS as the former moves from breakthroughs to businesses. But before nano’s political grip slips, the MEMS veteran isn’t above grabbing on when appropriate. He’s on the executive committee of the new National Science Foundation-funded Center for Integrated Nanomechanical Systems, an $11.9-million contract led by Berkeley and involving several other university, government and industrial labs.

In Pittsburgh last week, Howe wondered aloud to more than 100 leaders whether the MEMS industry ought to take the advice of Case Western Reserve University Professor Mehran Mehregany and call itself “Big Nano.”

“I’m a nano guy now,” Howe said. “But am I complete convert to nano? No.”

October 1, 2004 – Veeco Instruments Inc. and The Dow Chemical Co. have received $6.6 million in funding from the US Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology Advanced Technology Program for a three-year project to develop a quantitative nano-mechanical measurement instrument.

Veeco and Dow’s proposal was one of 32 selected for award funding from a total of 870 proposals following a rigorous peer-reviewed selection process. Veeco and Dow propose to jointly develop and validate a platform for high speed, high bandwidth, quantitative nano-mechanical measurements (QNM) on length scales smaller than 50nm, on a wide range of materials.

Successful completion of this proposal would lead to the creation of a new measurement platform enabling the development of nanomaterials. The QNM will be developed at Veeco. The platform will be based on recently demonstrated advancements in atomic force microscopy.

“The motivation for this project is to remove a fundamental limitation in the development of nanomaterials. Nanomaterials are forecasted to be a multi-billion dollar industry, but material scientists currently lack the ability to accurately and quickly map the mechanical properties of many materials on the nanoscale. Our program will provide a solution,” commented Anthony Martinez, Senior VP, GM, Veeco Metrology.