Nanomanufacturing 2010: A Review of Events and Milestones

As we approach the year end, the National Nanomanufacturing Network staff would like to extend our warmest wishes for a happy holiday season to our partners and affiliates, as well as the broader nanomanufacturing community and stakeholders. The past year has been very exciting as we have witnessed the establishment of several nanomanufacturing methods within industry roadmaps, along with numerous companies moving closer to commercial viability of nano-enabled products. This comes in a timely fashion as we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), which has catapulted the U.S. to a global leadership role in nanotechnology research and development.

While nanomanufacturing has become a thematic topic for many technical and professioal societies, various events this past year have focused solely on areas of emerging nanomanufacturing R&D and trends in nanotechnology commercialization, including several workshops that will ultimately contribute towards the NNI roadmap in focus areas, as well as major conferences that have been gaining interest both within and external to the nanomanufacturing community.

Further enhancing our outlook has been several common themes emerging from recent government reports and strategic plans (i.e; the PCAST Report to the President and Congress on the Third Assessment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative and the NNI Draft Strategic Plan) calling for increased emphasis on nanomanufacturing, effective technology transfer, and commercialization associated with nanoscale science and engineering research. Correlative to this is additional emphasis on education, workforce training, environmental health and safety, and societal impact that provides the cornerstone for a robust and sustainable strategy to maintain U.S. competitiveness and leadership in nanomanufacturing.

Further associated with this outlook is the success of various public-private partnerships at the national, state, and regional levels that are providing new models for rapidly transitioning emerging technologies from the laboratory to commercial scaleup. It is with this in mind that the NNN looks forward to the coming year in which we anticipate even greater progress in these areas and the evolution of key strategic roadmaps to guide nanomanufacturing through the next decade. We look forward to interacting and collaborating with many of you out there in developing and executing these strategies and to the future innovations and directions that will be provided by this community in 2011 and beyond.

Image reproduced from the NISE Network: Snowflakes: Nano at its Coolest.