INDUSTRY NEWS: Clinton Pumps Up Nanotech Spending.(Government Activity)(Brief Article)

President Clinton's FY 2001 budget request includes a $227 million (84%) increase in the government's investment in nanotechnology research and development. The Administration is making this major new initiative, called the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), a top priority.

The $497 million initiative, which nearly doubles the investment over FY 2000, will strengthen scientific disciplines and create critical interdisciplinary opportunities. Agencies participating in NNI include the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Defense (DOD), the Department of Energy (DOE), National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Roughly 70% of the new funding proposed under the NNI will go to university- based research, which will help meet the growing demand for workers with nanoscale science and engineering skills.

This initiative establishes "grand challenges" to fund interdisciplinary research and education teams, including centers and networks that work for major, long-term objectives. As defined by the White House, some of the breakthroughs that may be enabled by the initiative are the following:

The entire contents of the Library of Congress may be stored in a device the size of a sugar cube through the expansion of mass storage electronics to multi-terabit memory capacity;

Materials and products may be created from the bottom-up - that is, from atoms and molecules. Bottom-up manufacturing is expected to require less material and cause less pollution;

Materials may be developed that are an order of magnitude stronger than steel at a fraction of its weight in an effort to make all kinds of ...