Nanosystems science, the study of how things work in the submicroscopic world, has been a growing research enterprise at UCSB in recent years. With the state's decision to support the proposed California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), a research partnership between UCSB and UCLA, it promises to become a really big exploration of the possibilities of the very, very tiny.
Gov. Gray Davis announced last month that CNSI is one of three new California Institutes for Science and Innovation. The state will give each institute $25 million annually in matching grants for four years. The successful campuses--all part of the UC system--are enlisting industry to meet the additional $50 million required of them each year.
The new-born CNSI already has attracted nearly 30 corporate partners who have pledged over $40 million, Chancellor Henry Yang told the crowd at a celebratory UCSB reception on Dec. 7. "Together we will stake out an important place on the frontier of scientific innovation," he said.
Martha Krebs, former director of the U.S. Energy Department's Science Office, has been named CNSI executive director. Scientific co-directors are UCSB's Evelyn Hu, professor of materials and computer and electrical engineering, and UCLA's James Heath, professor of chemistry.
Hu told the gathering at the reception that just as CNSI will draw on the interdisciplinary strength of UCSB it will also greatly benefit the campus. "It will make us a university of the 21st century," she said.
Matthew Tirrell, dean of the College of Engineering, helped put together the CNSI package with UCLA and will be deeply involved in its research. The new, $42.5-million home for nanosystems labs and researchers planned for UCSB will have underground parking, according to its bid request.
Nanosystems' frontier is expected to be mapped in, among other fields, molecular medicine where genetic errors will be corrected; smaller, faster, more efficient computers; lighter, stronger building materials that follow nature's model of building from the bottom up; and lamps that use one-tenth of the energy of current light bulbs but never burn out.
If this sounds like science fiction, the manipulation of nature on the level of atoms and molecules is already underway in the laboratory. This arena is called the nanoscale or "nano-world," and uses a basic measurement--a nanometer--that means one billionth of a meter, or approximately one one-thousandth of the width of a human hair. Attempting technological control in such a world can stir some popular fears.
"While nanotechnology has raised some public concern, this stems more from the science-fiction aspect of what people regard to be nanotechnology rather than scientific fact," said Martin Moskovits, dean of the Division of Mathematics, Life and Physical Sciences in the College of Letters and Science. "The public can rest assured that the creation of tiny nano-gremlins that run amok causing havoc is nowhere in our plans. For us, nanotechnology is the synthesis and engineering of new materials with properties based on the controlled design of their submicroscopic structure."
Moskovits also noted that campus researchers have a long-standing interest in the development of nanotechnology. "UCSB's two recent Nobels, professors Alan Heeger and Herb Kroemer, foreshadowed through their work many of the most important aspects of nanotechnology," he said. "UCSB can be regarded as one of the founders of nanotech."
