NCSA NEWS

Workshop Exploring the Future of Nanoscience Announced

released January 29, 2002

The Berkeley National Laboratory has announced a workshop to explore the future of nanoscience research and planning its Molecular Foundry will be held in Berkeley, CA, on April 4 and 5.

The Molecular Foundry is a Department of Energy user facility at Berkeley Lab. Its focuses on keeping up with advancements in nanoscience research beyond the synthesis and characterization of nanostructured "building blocks" to the primary challenge of the next decade, which is the construction of complex functional assemblies of these building blocks.

The field of nanoscience is becoming increasingly multidisciplinary, involving both "soft" and "hard" nanostructured materials. In addition, nanoscience is quickly moving beyond the synthesis and characterization of nanostructured building blocks to the primary challenge of the next decade-the construction of complex functional assemblies of these building blocks. As a result, individual laboratories will have difficulty maintaining state-of-the-art expertise and instrumentation in all areas required for pursuit of their research interests.

The Molecular Foundry is a Department of Energy user facility at Berkely Lab that is designed to address these issues. The unique breadth of its facilities, from nanofabrication to nanotube synthesis to mammalian cell growth will be available to researchers from the university, industry and government laboratory community who are expert in one or more of these areas. Each fully equipped facility will be maintained by a full-time dedicated staff that will be available to assist users or collaborate with them.

The first workshop session will be dedicated to plenary talks by internationally recognized leaders in the field exploring the challenges we face in the construction of multi-component functional structures and devices.

The second session will be dedicated to small group meetings in which attendees will discuss their views of how the Foundry facilities can be designed and operated to be of greatest value to them as a community of users.

The program will also include tours of the Advanced Light Source, the National Center for Electron Microscopy and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, the three existing Berkeley Lab national user facilities that will be intimately linked, through facilitated user access, to the Foundry.

For more information, visit http://foundry.lbl.gov/.

 

Briefs Archive