ACADEMIA

By Tim Little -- Looking back at the Nanotechnology industry there is one person who has been at the pinnacle, the driver, the innovator, the supreme being behind and in front of the scenes. Mihhail C. Roco has driven the investment dollars in the nanotechnology research from $116 million a year to nearly a $1 billion dollars from 1997 to today. By recruiting and partnering with key agencies Dr. Roco has developed and driven a 10 year mission through the formation of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). Driving investment at the $100 million dollars mark year on year in this new found science would have been impossible just 10 years- stated Roco. The NNI is focusing on a very large scale picture in the fields of science and technology and will have a long standing impact on the technical direction within these areas of study. Dr. Roco is no stranger to the White House Crowd and had proposed the idea of the NNI back in 1999. Looking at the opportunity as a “long shot” at best he was extremely amazed at the attention it received. Roco campaigned and gained support from 5 key agencies. With this momentum and high-level acknowledgement of the need to invest in this emerging, yet significant technology they were able to get the attention of the President to fund the NNI. Any endeavor into new science can take years and years to develop. Developing supercomputing systems can takes 6-10 years sometimes and Mike Roco honestly predicted 20 to 30 years before nanotechnology would come develop meaningful products. Today Mike is extremely amazed at the significant developments made in the field and believe what was going to take 20 to 30 years will now be accomplished in 5 years. Dr. Roco is on a mission. Not a mission to Mars or Pluto, like the NASA group, but a mission to develop underlying fundamental scientific achievements in areas of understanding molecular level development and interaction. This understanding will have a profound impact on the way we develop all levels scientific discovery and shift our thought processes to a new paradigm – comments Roco. When we have conquered the understanding of sub molecular science the impacts will huge across fields we have yet to envision. The benefits to medical researcher enabling them to treat diseases with drugs working at a level even more directed than today’s drugs, and the understanding to how we can interact with our environment, without causing thousands of square miles of our oceans the devoid of pollution will sustain this planet for our future generations. Again we need to appreciate the commitment of the NSF to rewarding good ideas withstanding the technical financial reviews. Without this type of support for innovators like Dr, Roco’s our scientific dominance over the world we live in would surely lack. Currently the NSF is supporting more than 400 program in nanotechnology within the Academic and private business sectors. The focus of this spending is all across these good old United States with activities in every state.