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| John Hardin (left) and Griff Kundahl discuss North Carolina burgeoning nanotech sector and trends. |
By Griff Kundahl and John Hardin,
special to WTW
DURHAM, N.C. ― Charles Hamner, the visionary who oversaw the meteoric growth of the biotech sector in North Carolina, drew some important comparisons to North Carolina’s burgeoning nanotech sector at the fourth-annual Nanotech Commercialization Conference last month in Durham.
Hamner observed that nanotech could have a much more profoundly positive effect on North Carolina’s economy than has biotech. That’s a remarkable statement if you consider the numbers.
Since Hamner began his historic quest in the 1980s to make North Carolina a global biotech powerhouse, more than 500 bioscience companies have come to be headquartered or have operations in North Carolina, employing more than 58,000 people. A 2010 report from the non-profit Battelle Memorial Institute estimates the total economic activity of the biotech industry in North Carolina to be more than $64 billion – a phenomenally strong return on the state’s early investment to build the biotech sector.
The state’s initial investments in biotech – North Carolina was the first state in the nation to fund a biotech initiative – came in 1984, at a time when the state and the nation were reeling from a double-dip recession prompted by a global oil crisis and marked by high inflation and unemployment.
North Carolina, moreover, was facing a weakened and, in some respects, dying industrial base anchored by manufacturing, textiles and tobacco. The vision and commitment of Hamner, and the cohort of prophetic political leaders who paved the way, have helped established a modern and high-tech economy that has dramatically improved the lives of all North Carolinians.
Today’s economic climate echoes that of 30 years ago. Fortunately, North Carolina, with the world-class academic and industrial infrastructure built during the biotech boom, is now poised to become a global powerhouse in nanotech; a scale of technology which, Hamner observed, will bring even greater returns to the state.
According to the federal government, the global market for nanotech-enabled products will jump from $1 trillion to $3 trillion in the five years from 2015 to 2020. More than biotech, nanotech is a cross-cutting, platform technology whose impacts will drive economic recovery across numerous industries.
The time to stake North Carolina’s rightful claim to those markets is now.
1984 is to biotech, as 2012 is to nanotech.
Nanotechnology is the science of creating and manipulating materials, components, devices, and systems at the near-atomic, or nanometer, level. Nanotech draws its name from the scale at which the technology operates – at nanometers, or 1/1,000,000,000 (one one-billionth) of a meter.
This almost inconceivably small dimension is 100,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair, the size of an individual atom. The applications that nanotech enable are astounding and provide solutions to the grand challenges facing our society, from medicine to energy, not to mention tremendous economic benefits to the regions of the world that come to dominate the sector.
Using nanotech, researchers and manufacturers are fabricating materials literally molecule-by-molecule. They are custom designing ultra-precise new material structures, devices, and systems with unique properties, such as materials with the ability repel germs or that have highly-functionalized shapes. These advances have wide-ranging implications, from relatively mundane uses like glazes that help toilets stay clean, to life-saving uses like targeted drug delivery of medicines and vaccines.
Companies in the materials, energy, automotive, textile, agriculture, and information technology sectors are already using nanotech to enhance existing products as well as to create new ones. Advances in this burgeoning realm have yet to reach full commercialization potential, and there are numerous aspects of bringing nano-engineered and nano-enhanced products to the market that merit in-depth focus and discussion building on diverse perspectives and public/private partnerships.
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The Nanotech Commercialization Conference is an important driver for North Carolina to build and leverage these partnerships, but we must push them in other ways as well. A broader and sustained effort is needed.
In its 2006 North Carolina Nanotechnology Roadmap, the N.C. Department of Commerce’s Office of Science and Technology (OST) recognized nanotech’s potential for the state and has begun the hard work of sector-building. The North Carolina Biotechnology Center is contributing as well by fostering initiatives such as the Center of Innovation for Nanobiotechnology (COIN).
Unlike previous major disruptive technologies, however, the United States does not dominate the world’s nanotech R&D effort.
Europe and Asia each account for about one-third of the estimated global R&D spending on nanoscience and nanotech research, and virtually every country that provides significant support for R&D in the sciences has developed a nanotech strategy. Asian countries including Japan, China, and South Korea, as well as several European countries, have made international nanotech leadership a strategic national priority.
These countries recognize that nanoscale technologies will drive future manufacturing innovation and process productivity. They also recognize that developing these technologies will require major long-term R&D commitments by governments and their domestic industries to do things like building the workforce that can fuel the sector’s growth, just as Hamner did with biotech in North Carolian during the 80s and 90s.
Hamner and other leaders recognized the power of coordinated public and private economic-development action around an emerging technology sector. North Carolina can reap even greater and more broad-based benefits from developing the emerging nanotech economy across the state – if it takes actions akin to those taken in the early days of biotech.
If North Carolina’s experience with biotechnology is any guide, it takes decades, not years, to reap the full benefits of our efforts. With more than 100 companies and 35 university centers currently focused on nanotech, North Carolina has an early lead in the nanotech race. To keep that lead, the state’s public and private organizations must continue their partnerships to capitalize on nanotech.
Fonte: WRALtechwire
