Missouri Nano-Characterization/Synthesis Alliance notes

Note: The frames version of this page, in draft form, is currently available for comment here.

Hi. Thanks so much for coming to the MissOuri NanoAlliance meeting on Fri/Sat 14/15 May, 2004. Look for more on this here shortly, as I got back from Boston only on Saturday May 22/pf.

Thanks further to Bernard Feldman and Keith Stine, here are some notes on the meeting in PDF form for review and comment. Much of the open discussion was not covered in those notes, which focus largely on the individual presentations. That open discussion, among other things, came up with action items for the governor's Research Alliance of Missouri (RAM) to consider at its Tuesday May 18 meeting. These included...

• setting up state funding for NanoAlliance meetings twice a year, with rotating sites,
• support for a web-based nano-characterization/synthesis network (e.g. linked from here) that offers updated inventory, consultation/referrals, and arranged access, and which will generate a significant list of real collaborative impacts, of higher education on the economy, in the course of the next year,
• a possible "topical RAM meeting" later this year with patent, corporate, executive/legislative branch attendance, covering for example "technology sharing and the state economy" as complement to the Nov 2003 meeting on "technology transfer", with numerous sessions on the relevance of nanotechnology to the former. There is significant input that these parties will possibly want to hear in person.
.

• add groups/projects known to you into a table of regional groups/projects that face nano-scale challenges e.g. improving sustainability, healthcare, other products, and our knowledge base (cf. the May 15 talk slides below),
• let us know if you are willing to serve on a committee to put together a state-wide, or possibly Missouri-Kansas, nanotechnology proposal,
• look for a list of nano-alliance participants, with contact information, for you to add to here shortly,
• collect up and share lists, web links, and agreements which can serve as elements of the web-based network outlined below...

• What can existing synthesis and characterization groups presently offer to industry and university researchers across Missouri, and who might be interested in such support?
• What unmet and future needs exist for such support in the growing number of fields to which eyes on small size scales are crucial?
• How might the state, the governor's Research Alliance of Missouri, and individual organizations, nurture the effective pooling of regional resources with researchers across Missouri in mind?

Thus technology sharing and transfer are complementary considerations in context of the Missouri Research Alliance's mandate. NSF's NNUN initiative for regional nano-fabrication facilities, managed through Stanford and Cornell over the past decade, is serving as the pattern for their new National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN) initiative which now includes nano-characterization facilities. It involves the re-thinking of some university labs as open-access "collaboration facilities", something nano-characterization alliance members in Missouri have been doing informally for decades. Some advantages of technology sharing through a nano-alliance analytical support cycle are listed below:

• Infrastructure is in place but widely distributed among willing participants at corporate, university, and institute labs, so that start-up will be fast and low cost.
• Incoming challenges from employers across the state are abundant already and easily expanded, so that tech-sharing via this pathway is a fast way for RAM to accumulate results (and added pins on a state impact map).
• Agreements are from the beginning supported by an ethics of analytical support (which will eventually acquire the same legal status as other forms of privileged interaction), and are also generally easier to standardize if characterization is the primary mandate of one of the participants.
• Facilities and collaborations go directly to the retention and attraction of employers in the state, as there is no invention to leave the state with, only collaborators in the state to leave behind (or gain upon arrival).
• This infrastructure helps both industry and university labs to compete, and to justify their location in Missouri. For example, nano-characterization has been key to a nearly 30% reduction in the cost of RoundUp to farmers, and a factor in relocation of industry facilities (e.g. a Monsanto Indian Orchid group) to Missouri. There have also been times when MEMC was asked to provide insight into problems with competitor wafers, because of regional expertise. State focus on nano-characterization strengths could make it an even larger contributor, than it already is, toward keeping research groups in the state.

While waiting for this construction to be organized, here find slides from a 15 May 2004 MissOuri NanoAlliance meeting talk in St. Louis, a 5 May 2004 technical reputation workgroup discussion, slides for a 13 Apr 2004 discussion during visits to our lab by Chancellor Tom George and Monsanto Queeny Award winner, senior fellow, and proteomics group leader Jingyue Liu, notes for a 19 Feb 2004 discussion of UM-StL outreach with a campus administrative working group meeting hosted by the graduate dean, notes for a 22 Dec 2003 presentation on nano-alliances to the governor's Research Alliance of Missouri in Jeff City, the same-day announcement of NSF's National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network hub-proposal award (look for some node-proposal opportunities downstream), and some earlier notes from a 25 Oct 2003 talk and discussion of regional nano-characterization consortium strategies with members of the Central States Microscopy and Microanalysis Society at the Donald Danforth Plant Sciences Center in St. Louis.

• Northwest Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Network
• UT Austin Microelectronics Research Center NNIN Announcement