keninabu!

Nanotech conference

There was a Rice Nanotechnology Conference, and I was there.

Weirdly enough, I was practically the only person from my research group to be there: I was surprised that my group didn't have a higher profile, given that my research supervisor is extremely famous, and has her own company which is presumably looking for more funding to expand their research.

It was an interesting amalgam of people: I met a Taiwanese academic from Lamar University doing research on fuel cells, and also met a representative of the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park who gave me his card ("if you are interested in setting up a company to expand into China"). I also met up with the ex-postdoc of my group, who has since migrated to a different research group, where he seems extremely happy...

The conference program was extremely fascinating. Best of all, they gave 400 of the 600 participants a copy of the "Nanotechnology for Dummies" book by an acquaintance of mine who was in the same quantum mechanics course as I was. On a cursory examination, it seems like an extremely good book which gives a very good overview of the existing research and technologies: it might very well be outdated within a year or two, though.

The morning started out with introductory talks by Candace Stuart of Small Times magazine, followed by research talks by three Rice professors. In the afternoon, there were company presentations by 6 companies, followed by a Venture Capitalist panel which rated and commented on the presentations by the 6 companies.

One of the companies was extremely striking: Zyvex. They have a whole plethora of nanomaterials with crazy properties, and some very interesting projects in their pipeline, including a mass spectrometer that seems to be all of ONE SQUARE CENTIMETER. Pretty damn cool, if you ask me.

Another company was Q-Flo, which seems to be pretty awesome in its ability to make new nanofibres.

All these companies have established capabilities, and it seems to me that their biggest issue is to expand their business by pushing for their clients to adopt their technologies and make new products out of them, as Zybex already has. The potential for this is really enormous, especially for defense and technology: it really wouldn't be too far out, I think, to dream of a day when they will use single-walled nanotubes (SWNT for short) to make carbon nanotube fibres, which are bullet and blast-proof: already, Q-flo makes fibres which are easily two to three times the strength of Kevlar, which is the most common protective material for personal protection.

There are so many potential applications everywhere, I really think it will just be a matter of time before these things will really take off, and a boom will come with all its ensuing hype.

Which leads me to wonder, what should I do next: go into industry, or try to "be a scientist --- save the world" as the late Dr. Rick Smalley said?

posted by keninabu @ 10:26 PM