(Santa Barbara, Calif.) – The National Science Foundation has selected the University of California, Santa Barbara to host one of two national centers to study the societal implications of nanotechnology.  The Center for Nanotechnology in Society joins UCSB’s unusually strong complement of nanoscale scientists and engineers and UCSB’s portion of the California NanoSystems Institute, a joint effort with UCLA and industrial partners.

The center will help scientists and scholars, policy makers, and the public better understand the societal implications of nanotechnologies as they unfold over the next decade. “A revolution in science is going on around us,” said Bruce Bimber, a professor of political science who led the grant-writing team. Governments around the world are making huge investments in nano as the ‘next big thing,’ hoping to discover technologies that will solve economic and environmental problems while creating whole new industries. Our job at this new center is to try to understand how these technologies are affecting societies, and to influence the direction of innovation in positive ways.”

A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter, and research at the scale of 1 to 100 nanometers has shown that materials that are engineered at that minute scale have novel properties and unusual powers.  “There is potential for major breakthroughs in water filtration, solar energy, drug efficiency, computer processor speed, telecommunications, and security,” noted Evelyn Hu, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, director of the CNSI, and a co-principal investigator on the CNS grant.  “The most exciting single thing may be that the nanoscale is where all the sciences converge.  When we bring the insights of physics, engineering, biology, chemistry together, we can see how electronic circuitry, for example, might acquire the efficiencies of living systems.  Though many nanotechnologies are years or decades away from the market, we have solid evidence of their enormous potential.”

The cross-disciplinary collaborations that distinguish UCSB nanoscience research also underlay the creation of the CNS.  The Center has been designed by a group of eight faculty from the fields of Anthropology, Communication, Electrical Engineering, Education, English, History, Political Science, and Sociology. “We think that UC Santa Barbara presents the perfect environment for addressing such a complex and important issue, and we are pleased that the NSF reviewers agreed," said Michael Witherell, vice chancellor for research. “This center will take a novel approach to studying the impact of new technology on society, involving an extraordinary collaboration of researchers from very different fields.”

The Center will allow unusually close contact between scientists and engineers, on the one hand, and humanists and social scientists on the other.  Center researchers collaborate with colleagues across the US and in several other countries, designed to create an international network of research. 

In addition to providing a special research environment, the Center will integrate educational and research activities.  “We are particularly concerned with forming the next generation of creative and ethical scientists,” said Fiona Goodchild, the Center’s director of educational programs.  “We see thinking, teaching, learning, and building as shared activities that improve classrooms and laboratories alike.” The Center will bring community college and other K-14 students to UCSB, enhance public interest and involvement in science, and develop an information clearinghouse that will make available a wide range of publications, reports, and other data pertaining to the social understanding and implications of nanotechnology.

The Center’s development team wanted to complement other research on the social and cultural dimensions of nanotechnology without duplicating it.  “Our partner center at Arizona State University is particularly strong on efforts to involve the public in scientific development at an early stage,” said Barbara Harthorn, an anthropologist and CNS co-director.  “We would like to do the same, and have strong public outreach and education components.  We also looked for major gaps in existing research knowledge, and are planning to fill them.”

One of these gaps is in knowledge of what the “nanoenterprise” actually looks like.  “Nanoscale research is continuous with other research in fields like chemistry and electrical engineering, so boundaries are difficult to find,” observed Patrick McCray, a historian of science and the Center’s other co-director.  “My research group will be looking at where funding is going, how research efforts are connected and where results are disseminated.”  McCray will produce a broad oral history of the scientists at work that will preserve a record of their relationships, challenges, and decisions.

The Center team identified other pressing research needs.  Its second group will study technological innovation and diffusion at the nanoscale. “A high rate of innovation in cutting-edge fields is now seen as one – if not the – necessary condition of a successful economy,” noted co-PI Christopher Newfield, who studies the impact of education, ideas, and cultural perspectives on economic outcomes.   “But we know little about how the overall innovation process  works - about the big picture of how individuals, groups, organizations, and cultures interact to help or hurt each other.  We know even less about whether nanoscale research will have different requirements.”  Newfield will work with David Seibold, a professor of Communication and an authority on group communication, to study the effect of intellectual property regulations and group structure on innovation. 

Although nanotech investment is global, most existing economic strategizing is regional or national.  To correct this, Richard Appelbaum, an economic sociologist, will examine innovation and diffusion in its global economic environment.  “If China trains ten times more nanoscale engineers than the United States, does this make nano the next big thing . . . but for someone else?”  “Or,” Appelbaum continues, “will globalized nanotech help reduce global poverty and enhance sustainable development?  We’re interested in developing the kind of knowledge that will identify the positive outcomes and make them more likely.” 

Nanoscale research will produce new materials that raise toxicity and similar risks, and will generate new capacities for surveillance and privacy violations.  The CNS’s third group, led by Dr. Harthorn, will examine public perception of risks, assess methods for incorporating public concerns, and analyze social movements relating to nanotechnology.  Harthorn observed that it's an "unprecedented opportunity from a research standpoint," to be able to examine the public perception of a large issue "before it hits public awareness in a big way."  Bimber will complement Harthorn’s study with an assessment of the responses of social movements to nanotechnology, which in potentially important sites of nanoscale research like India, are already taking form.

While it will be based at UCSB, the Center for Nanotechnology in Society is a large-scale international collaborative enterprise that will involve social scientists, humanists, and scientists and engineers from all over the nation and the world.  The NSF will provide $5 million in grant funds to support the Center in its first five years of operation. The grant is renewable.

The new center will open on January 1, 2006 in offices located both in North Hall and in the new California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) building.

For more information about the new Center for Nanotechnology in Society at UCSB, contact either of the co-directors:

Barbara Herr Harthorn, (805) 893-3350; harthorn@isber.ucsb.edu