European nanotechnology on integrating nanomaterial research Infrastructures

All our modern technologies from information and communication, energy, and the environment to health and transport depend on the development of materials that can withstand the highest mechanical and thermal load, transfer data at the greatest speeds, safely store data in the smallest dimensions, ensure biocompatible transplants, remove monoxides from car exhausts, or separate protons and electrons in fuel cells.
This has led to great expectations for the future of nanomaterials science and worldwide attention has been drawn to the enormous potential of nanoscience and nanotechnology.

Although Europe’s expertise in nanomaterials science is excellent, it is highly fragmented into scientific disciplines, sectors and national efforts which are on a global level often subcritical. Europe would considerably benefit from a strategic pan-European, multidisciplinary research involving all sectors and the most advanced European research infrastructures.

GENNESYS White Paper

Source

MIT, Portuguese lab form joint nanotech initiative

MIT has announced a collaboration with the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory in Portugal to create a joint initiative to develop nanotechnology-focused research. Anantha Chandrakasan, director of the MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories, will serve as MIT’s inaugural director of MIT-INL, along with Carl Thompson, director of the Materials Processing Center.

The MIT-INL initiative will add 10 senior research positions and dedicate $35 million to new research in the program’s first five years at MIT.

According to a joint press release, MIT stands to benefit from INL’s strength in biotechnology, nanotechnology, materials science and engineering. MIT-INL is the first U.S. collaboration for INL, a joint development of Portugal and Spain.

On tap for the first joint projects of MIT-INL are “nanoparticles that can selectively adsorb water contaminants, autonomous microsystems that can move around water supplies and sense contaminants, new materials for energy storage, and revolutionary tools and technologies for monitoring our food supply,” the release reports.

Source

MIT Portugal

Blogs impact on Nanotech research

More steps are being taken for the scientific community to spread to the newfound medias that blogs represent.
Using the blog community for stimulating the growth of ideas and attract more people to the broad field of nanotechnology is probably the beginning of revolutionary new ways to expand science to the masses.

The Daily Nexus Online published an article linking nanotechnology and blogs:

“Blogs are having a major impact on research, since they allow sharing of interim results, provisional findings, new but untested ideas, and many of the ingredients of creative thinking,”

read the article here.

The article mentions a new blog in the nanotech blog community, called Nanoscience and Nanosociety Linking Nanoscience, Society, and Culture
Sharing academic research and new ideas, contributors include graduate students studying nanotechnology and people associated with R&D nanotechnology centers.

I recommend it to anyone interested enough to be reading this blog, so go and visit them: Nanoscience and Nanosociety blog