To better understand and anticipate what one researcher calls the “risk, hope, hype, and fear” of nanotechnology, NSF is funding two new centers and two related projects to create a four-university network that will study the “societal implications” of the rapidly expanding field of science. The five-year grants, which total $14.3 million, will fund the sixth major NSF nanotechnology research network and add yet another piece to the $1 billion-per-year US National Nanotechnology Initiative.
The University of California, Santa Barbara, will receive $5 million, and Arizona State University in Tempe will get $6.2 million to establish the centers, which will research the implications of nanotechnology on everything from the equitable distribution of benefits to the convergence of biology and nanomachines. “Nanotechnology promises insights and innovations that could revolutionize whole sectors like manufacturing, energy, and health care,” said David Guston, a political scientist and the principal investigator at the ASU center....
