James Murday, director of the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office, talks at the University of Illinois Nanotechnology Industry Workshop at the Levis Faculty Center in Urbana on May 9, 2003.
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Keynote speaker stresses necessity of new technology
By GREG KLINE
©2003 The News-Gazette
The U.S. House this week approved spending $2.4 billion over the next three years on research to develop nanotechnology, so you can bet James Murday has an attentive audience wherever he goes.
Murday, director of the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office, says there's good reason for making the big investment – the worldwide competition for leadership in a technology that could spur the next industrial revolution.
China already outspends the United States on nanotechnology development and Japan and Western Europe are hard at it, Murday said in a talk at the University of Illinois on Friday.
Those are among the signs that America may not be able to dominate the field as it has most scientific developments since the end of World War II, including computer and information technology, said Murday, who also is acting chief scientist of the Office of Naval Research.
At stake: an estimated trillion dollar economic impact within 15 to 20 years, according to one government study. Murday said the estimate may not be far wrong given developments in the electronics industry, which make $300 billion of it almost a given.
"By the end of the decade, you will not wish to buy an electronics device that isn't enabled by nano inside," he said.
Murday was the keynote speaker at the Nanotechnology Industry Workshop sponsored by the UI's Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology. The event at the Levis Faculty Center drew a crowd of academic and industry leaders and scientists.
Nanotechnology refers to a standard scientific unit of measurement called the nanometer, which is a billionth of a meter or about 10 hydrogen atoms laid side by side. The technology involves the creation and manipulation of structures, materials and devices at an atomic level.
Murday listed just a few of the potential reasons for wanting to do that. Nanotechnology promises to be the basis for exponentially faster, smaller and less power-hungry computing systems and massive data storage capacity the size of a postage stamp or less. It could yield new generations of fantastic composite materials. It might result in tiny, inside-the-body devices to continually monitor health and deliver treatments precisely where needed.
UI officials at the conference made it clear the university intends to be a player in the field, on which researchers around campus have been quietly working for years, Provost Richard Herman said.
In part that's because nanotechnology represents an exciting opportunity "to make revolutionary discoveries," said David Daniel, dean of the UI College of Engineering.
It also plays to the UI's traditional strengths, among them interdisciplinary research, said Robert Easter, dean of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences.
Besides obvious applications in areas such as electronics and medicine, Easter said nanotechnology combined with biotechnology has the potential to change the way the food production system works.
Then there's the matter of money. Herman noted that the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, two major funders of research at the UI, are investing heavily in nanotechnology development.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Defense Department were among the other agencies with research grants to give that Murday outlined as being part of the government's nanotechnology initiative.
"It really does touch many areas of our campus," Herman said.
He added that the field is ripe for technology transfer, which could generate spinoff economic development benefits from the UI's research.
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