Posted: February 21, 2007

Nanotechnology leaders explore paths from research lab to marketplace

(Nanowerk News) Scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs working on the leading edge of nanotechnology will gather at Arizona State University for the international Nano and Giga Challenges Symposium, March 12 to 16, 2007.
Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano will give a welcoming address at 9 a.m. March 14, officially opening an event, which is expected to draw as many as 500 attendees from 50 nations to ASU's campus in Tempe.
Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon is scheduled to open the symposium sessions on the morning of March 16. Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman is to address attendees on March 15.
Two Nobel Prize winners in science will be featured speakers at the event, among 200 presenters and more than 60 speakers from top universities and national laboratories in 30 countries, as well as major international companies such as Intel, Motorola and IBM.
Nobel Laureates to attend are John Polanyi, a professor at the University of Toronto, won a Nobel Prize in 1986 for research in chemistry, and physicist Nicolaas Bloembergen, who won the prize in 1981 for work in laser spectroscopy. Bloembergen is a professor emeritus of Harvard University and now visiting professor at the Arizona Center for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Arizona.
They will join colleagues from academia, industry and government to explore ways to apply "nano" or molecular (small-scale) devices to meet "giga" (gigantic) scientific and technological challenges.
"This conference will provide a rare forum that brings scientists together with entrepreneurs to examine ideas for how to take nanotechnology research and employ it for successful commercial ventures," says Herb Finkelstein, industrial and government research liaison with ASU's Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering.
The focus will be on efforts to spark advances in nano-scale electronic and optoelectronic devices, high-performance integrated circuits, sensor technology and molecular electronics and bioelectronics ' progress that is crucial to meeting growing demand from industry, government and consumers for improved technologies.
"Nanotechnology is emerging as a major enabling solution for many of the world's technological problems," says Herb Goronkin, president of Phoenix-based Technology Acceleration Associates and chair of the conference advisory board. "It touches on numerous areas of current research by providing unique solutions to the design, fabrication and performance of products that could not previously be manufactured."
Academic and industrial researchers will present research papers on work to merge microelectronics, nanoelectronics and photonics in such areas as atomic-scale materials design, theory and experiment, bio- and molecular electronics and photonics, high frequency electronics, fabrication of nanodevices, magnetic materials and spintronics, materials and processes for integrated and subwave optoelectronics, nanoCMOS, new materials for FETs and other devices, nanoelectronics system architecture, nano optics and lasers, non-silicon materials and devices, and quantum effects in devices.
"Breakthroughs in nanotechnology will revolutionize products across the scientific and commercial spectrum, creating significant opportunities for innovative entrepreneurs," Goronkin says.
"The Nano Giga Challenges conference is uniquely poised to mark the research transition from basic science of nanomaterials to creation of new functions and systems built upon those materials," he says.
The event will boost Arizona's burgeoning reputation as a promising center for science and technology innovation, said Stephen Goodnick, ASU associate vice president of research.
"It will showcase ASU's nanotechnology program and bring visibility to a broad range of microelectronics and biotech industries in the Valley. It's expected to generate more than $1 million for the local economy, but more importantly it should create a variety of business, research and educational opportunities in the Phoenix metropolitan area," Goodnick said.
ASU is joined as organizer and head sponsor by Anatoli Korkin, president of Gilbert, Ariz.-based Nano and Giga Solutions, which provides consulting services in computational nanotechnology.
Source: Arizona State University