Where are the Emerging Hotspots for Nanotechnology?

The field of nanotechnology is progressing in terms of size and maturity. The federal investment, alone, as proposed by the Administration in the 2008 Budget under the National Nanotechnology Initiative, was $1.45 billion. As public and private sector investments are pumped into this field, distinct concentrations of nanotech activity are being created in regions across the country.



One might think these emerging hotspots are located in close proximity to the leading nanotechnology research institutions. The May/June 2007 edition of Small Times magazine lists the top universities in the micro and nano fields, in categories such as research, education, facilities, and commercialization leadership. Two versions of these top 10 lists are provided, one for the universities that completed the Small Times survey and one version developed from opinions of peers in the field. Besides these rankings, the magazine provides a profile of many of these research-intensive universities where nanotechnology clusters may develop.



A simple, yet novel, tool to view these concentrations recently was unveiled by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, a partnership formed in April 2005 between The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars. Named the "NanoMetro Mashup", the tool is an interactive map that illustrates the location of nanotechnology-related companies, universities, research laboratories, and organizations throughout the U.S. Each location is labeled with a marker and color-coded by sector, indicating expertise in materials, medicine and health, and tools and instruments for example. At certain levels of scale, the map aggregates the number of markers and displays a circle representing the size of the nanotechnology presence in each metropolitan area.



By this methodology of counting nanotech institutions, the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies puts the top four nanotechnology states as California, Massachusetts, New York and Texas. They determine the top 12 metro areas to be: San Jose; Boston; San Francisco; Oakland; Middlesex-Essex, Mass.; San Diego; Austin; Denver; Houston; Chicago; Santa-Ana, Calif.; and Seattle.

 

How does your state or region fare?



You can see the map at http://www.penmedia.org/maps/mappage.html. At this same site, you can submit information about nanotechnology institutions, which are absent from the data.



The website for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, which contains a variety of information such as the incorporation of nanotechnology in everyday products and reports on future nanotech trends and health and environmental considerations, can be found at: http://www.nanotechproject.org/



The May/June 2007 issue of Small Times is available at: http://www.smalltimes.com/articles/print_toc.cfm?p=109