Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers (nm). At this scale, commonly known as the nanoscale, surface area and quantum mechanical effects become important in describing properties of matter. This definition of nanotechnology includes all types of research and technologies that deal with these special properties. It is common to see the plural form "nanotechnologies" as well as "nanoscale technologies" to refer to research and applications whose common trait is scale. An earlier understanding of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal of precisely manipulating atoms and molecules for fabricating macroscale products, now referred to as molecular nanotechnology.
The University of Alberta is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta, and Henry Marshall Tory, the university's first president. It was enabled through the Post-secondary Learning Act. The university is considered a "comprehensive academic and research university" (CARU), which means that it offers a range of academic and professional programs that generally lead to undergraduate and graduate level credentials.
The National Research Council Canada is the primary national agency of the Government of Canada dedicated to science and technology research and development. It is the largest federal research and development organization in Canada.
Sir Mark Edward Welland, is a British physicist who is a professor of nanotechnology at the University of Cambridge and head of the Nanoscience Centre. He has been a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, since 1986 and started his career in nanotechnology at IBM Research, where he was part of the team that developed one of the first scanning tunnelling microscopes. He was served as the Master of St Catharine's College, Cambridge and took up office from 2016 to 2023.
A research institute, research centre, or research organization is an establishment founded for doing research. Research institutes may specialize in basic research or may be oriented to applied research. Although the term often implies natural science research, there are also many research institutes in the social science as well, especially for sociological and historical research purposes.
The history of nanotechnology traces the development of the concepts and experimental work falling under the broad category of nanotechnology. Although nanotechnology is a relatively recent development in scientific research, the development of its central concepts happened over a longer period of time. The emergence of nanotechnology in the 1980s was caused by the convergence of experimental advances such as the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope in 1981 and the discovery of fullerenes in 1985, with the elucidation and popularization of a conceptual framework for the goals of nanotechnology beginning with the 1986 publication of the book Engines of Creation. The field was subject to growing public awareness and controversy in the early 2000s, with prominent debates about both its potential implications as well as the feasibility of the applications envisioned by advocates of molecular nanotechnology, and with governments moving to promote and fund research into nanotechnology. The early 2000s also saw the beginnings of commercial applications of nanotechnology, although these were limited to bulk applications of nanomaterials rather than the transformative applications envisioned by the field.
The University of Alberta Faculty of Engineering is one of the largest engineering schools in Canada in terms of size, international impact, and reputation. The faculty is home to 1 Canada Excellence Research Chair, 16 Canada Research Chairs, 13 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council chairs, and 5 Foundation Supported Chairs.
Expenditures by federal and provincial organizations on scientific research and development accounted for about 10% of all such spending in Canada in 2006. These organizations are active in natural and social science research, engineering research, industrial research and medical research.
This article outlines the history of natural scientific research in Canada, including physics, astronomy, space science, geology, oceanography, chemistry, biology, and medical research. Neither the social sciences nor the formal sciences are treated here.
The Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN) is located at the University of Waterloo and is co-located with the Institute for Quantum Computing in the Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre (QNC). WIN is currently headed by Dr. Sushanta Mitra.
The Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) (in English: Italian Institute of Technology) is a scientific research centre based in Genoa (Italy, EU). Its main goal is the advancement of science, in Italy and worldwide, through projects and discoveries oriented to applications and technology. Some account IIT as the best Italian scientific research centre.
The Central European Institute of Technology (CEITEC) is an educational and research institution in Brno, Czech Republic. It is a centre specialising in life sciences, advanced materials and nanotechnology research.
The Center for Nanotechnology in Society at the University of California at Santa Barbara (CNS-UCSB) is funded by the National Science Foundation and "serves as a national research and education center, a network hub among researchers and educators concerned with societal issues concerning nanotechnologies, and a resource base for studying these issues in the US and abroad." The CNS-UCSB began its operations in January 2006.
Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre is a research and development laboratory for quantum information science and nanotechnology at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The facilities are shared by the Waterloo Institute for Quantum Computing, the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology and the Nanotechnology Engineering program at the University of Waterloo.
IMDEA Nanoscience Institute is a private non-profit foundation within the IMDEA Institutes network, created in 2006-2007 as a result of collaboration agreement between the Community of Madrid and Spanish Ministry of Education and Science. The foundation manages IMDEA-Nanoscience Institute, a scientific centre dedicated to front-line research in nanoscience, nanotechnology and molecular design and aiming at transferable innovations and close contact with industries. IMDEA Nanoscience is a member of the Campus of International excellence, a consortium of research institutes promoted by the Autonomous University of Madrid and Spanish National Research Council (UAM/CSIC).
Murali Sastry is an Indian material chemist, nanomaterial scientist and the chief executive officer of the IITB-Monash Research Academy. He is a former chief scientist at Tata Chemicals and a former senior scientist at the National Chemical Laboratory. He is known for his studies on surfaces, films and materials chemistry and is an elected fellow of Maharashtra Academy of Sciences and the Indian Academy of Sciences. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 2002, for his contributions to chemical sciences.
Arup Kumar Raychaudhuri is an Indian condensed matter physicist, materials scientist and a Distinguished Emeritus Professor at the S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences. Known for his pioneering work on the interplay of disorder and interaction, Raychaudhuri is an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies viz. Indian Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India and Indian National Science Academy as well as the Asia-Pacific Academy of Materials. He is a recipient of a number of awards such as Millennium Medal of the Indian Science Congress, ICS Gold Medal of the Materials Research Society of India and FICCI Award. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to physical sciences in 1994.
Carlo Montemagno was an American engineer and expert in nanotechnology and biomedical engineering, focusing on futuristic technologies to create interdisciplinary solutions for the grand challenges in health, energy and the environment. He has been considered one of the pioneers of bionanotechnology. Some of his fundamental contributions include the development of biomolecular motors for powering inorganic nanodevices while at Cornell and muscle-driven self-assembled nanodevices while at UCLA.
Anne-Sophie Duwez is a Belgian scientist and professor in the department of chemistry at the University of Liege. She is well known for her work in advanced atomic force microscopy (AFM) and single-molecule force spectroscopy, leading to her receipt of the 2021 Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology in the Experimental Category.
