House Bill Is One Small Step For Nanotechnology

Silicon Valley Rep. Mike Honda (D.-Calif.) introduced a bill in the House last week to create a federal nanotechnology advisory board. The purpose of the board, to be composed of industry and academia experts, would be to articulate short-term (1-5 years), medium-range (6-10 years), and long-range (10+ years) goals and objectives and to establish performance metrics for the National Nanotechnology Initiative. The NNI began as a 1996 federal interagency working group which has since grown into a collaborative initiative of 13 Federal agencies. A review of the NNI and its efforts is here. The scale of the US Federal nanotech program is larger than most people realize, and it is growing. In recent weeks the National Science Foundation alone granted over $70 million in funding to a wide variety of nano projects and their solicitaiton for other nano work in 2003 is on the street with an initial deadline of April 7.