Nanotech minds meet at OMSI

Participants: Oregon needs to turn out more doctoral-level graduates in math and science

By Ryan Geddes

LocalNewsDaily.com, Apr 4, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

PORTLAND — When U.S. Commerce Department Undersecretary for Technology Robert Cresanti toured China recently with a group of American scientists and businesspeople, an eager young Chinese entrepreneur thrust a bag of nanomolecules at them, along with a couple of questions.

The scientist had created the tinier-than-tiny structures at the behest of his government, which has been throwing money at all things nano of late. What the man wanted to know from the visiting American researchers, bureaucrats and corporate types was, what do I do now? Oh, and are these things safe?

Cresanti says the group took a collective step back from the man who was waving the bag of nanopowders in their general direction. They were good questions.

On Tuesday, Cresanti joined Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and some of Oregon's top nanotechnology experts at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland for a regionally focused roundtable discussion about the challenges facing the burgeoning scientific field.

Nanotechnology is performed at the atomic, molecular or macromolecular levels, at a scale of about 1 to 100 nanometers. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter, too small to be seen by conventional microscopes. It's a field that has potential applications in the chemical, medical, manufacturing and electronics industries, and state leaders are eager to be part of nanotech's promising future.

In February 2006, senators Gordon Smith (R-Oregon) and Wyden, who co-chairs the Congressional Nanotechnology Caucus, helped secure $8 million federal funding over the next three years to help achieve that goal, and they're pushing for more. President George W. Bush's proposed national nanotechnology research budget for fiscal year 2008 is $1.4 billion, three times what was budgeted in 2001.

"Our goal is to make Oregon the place to come to see nanotechnology done right," Wyden said at the roundtable, titled "Nanotechnology Commercialization: Where are we now?"

Although no one at the meeting expected to answer that question in full Tuesday, the 25 participants shared their challenges and suggestions for moving the state's efforts forward.

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