NanoInnovation: What Every Manager Needs to Know

3What Nanoscientists Are Working On

The real nanotech pioneers aren't those with just grand ideas, but rather those who make them happen.

– Chad Mirkin, Northwestern University

Every discipline and industry has its own set of world-changing nanoscience targets. Some of these are being worked on quietly out of the public spotlight, while others are trumpeted almost daily in the media. Many of these science goals sound simplistic when you hear about them on the Discovery Channel or in the New York Times, such as invisibility cloaks, miraculous cures for cancer, or materials that are stronger than steel.

The reality is that all of these so-called miracles get their start in a science laboratory – in government laboratories such as the National Science Foundation, NASA, the US Navy, and DARPA; at corporations like Bayer, Eastman Kodak, Fraunhofer, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Nippon Electric, Nokia, and Samsung; and most notably, on hundreds of university campuses around the world. Many science centers are university–industry collaborations, such as the Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center in Zurich, Switzerland; part of a $90 million shared research infrastructure developed by IBM and ETH-Zurich (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology).

Of course, before any science-based nanoinnovation can be implemented and commercialized – long before companies and families can reap the benefits – a scientist in a laboratory, somewhere in the world, has to find a way to bend or slow, or stop ...