California Nanosystems Institute
Encyclopedia
The California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) is an integrated research center operating jointly at UCLA
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...

 and UC Santa Barbara
University of California, Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...

 whose mission is to foster interdisciplinary collaborations for discoveries in nanosystems and nanotechnology
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials, devices, or other structures possessing at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres...

; train the next generation of scientists, educators and technology leaders; and facilitate partnerships with industry, fueling economic development and the social well-being of California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and the world
World
World is a common name for the whole of human civilization, specifically human experience, history, or the human condition in general, worldwide, i.e. anywhere on Earth....

. CNSI was created by Governor Gray Davis
Gray Davis
Joseph Graham "Gray" Davis, Jr. is an American Democratic politician who served as California's 37th Governor from 1999 until being recalled in 2003...

 as part of a science and innovation initiative, it was established in 2000 with $100 million from the state of California and an additional $250 million in federal research grants and industry funding. At the institute, scientists in the areas of biology, chemistry, biochemistry, physics, mathematics, computational science and engineering are measuring, modifying and manipulating the building blocks of our world - atom
Atom
The atom is a basic unit of matter that consists of a dense central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The atomic nucleus contains a mix of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons...

s and molecule
Molecule
A molecule is an electrically neutral group of at least two atoms held together by covalent chemical bonds. Molecules are distinguished from ions by their electrical charge...

s. These scientists benefit from an integrated laboratory culture enabling them to conduct dynamic research at the nanoscale
Nanoscopic scale
The nanoscopic scale usually refers to structures with a length scale applicable to nanotechnology, usually cited as 1-100 nanometers. The nanoscopic scale is a lower bound to the mesoscopic scale for most solids....

, leading to significant breakthroughs in the areas of health, energy, the environment and information technology.

History

On December 7, 2000, California Governor Gray Davis announced the location of the federally sponsored California NanoSystems Institute section of the California Institutes for Science and Innovation (Cal ISI’s) initiative over satellite feed. The California legislature put forth $100 million for three research facilities to advance the future of the California economy. The California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) was selected out of the proposals along with three other Cal ISI’s: California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences
California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences
The California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences is a nonprofit research and technology commercialization institute spanning three University of California campuses in the San Francisco Bay Area: UC Berkeley, UCSF, and UC Santa Cruz...

 (QB3), California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Cal-(IT)2), and Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society
Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society
The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society is an institute operated by the State of California to facilitate the real-world application of technological research...

 (CITRIS).
In August, 2000, CNSI was founded on both campuses of UCSB and UCLA. Martha Krebs, the former director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, was named the founder.

UCLA

The people that oversee CNSI at UCLA are broken down into 4 groups: Leaders (group of head directors), Governing Board, Executive Committee, and External Advisory Board.

Leadership

  • Paul S. Weiss, Ph.D.
    Ph.D.
    A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

    -Director
  • Leonard H. Rome, Ph.D.-Associate Director
  • Kang Wang, Ph.D.-Associate Director

Governing Board

The Governing Board was created to advise the leaders in all scientific issues including operations and research guidance of CNSI. Also, the Governing Board helps in creating objectives for researchers to strive for in the future. Today, the Governing Board consists of 6 Deans from UCLA's schools of medicine, engineering and sciences.

Executive Committee

The CNSI Executive Committee overlooks all business policy related matters. Also, the Executive Committee governs and manages any and all CNSI issues like the Governing Board. CNSI bylaws were created the Executive Committee on December 13, 2007.

External Advisory Board

The CNSI External Advisory Board has been established to provide advice and guidance to the Institute Director and Co-Director in their efforts to develop the CNSI as an international center for the advancement of nanoscience and nanotechnology. The board seeks to identify innovative collaborative partnerships with industry to enhance the CNSI's impact at state, national and international levels. The board assists in defining performance expectations for the Institute and oversees regular reviews prepared by the Director and Co-Director. The board meets annually.

UCSB

The people in charge of UCSB CNSI fall into 2 categories: the administrative staff and the faculty.

Administrative staff

  • David Awschalom
    David Awschalom
    David D. Awschalom is an American condensed matter experimental physicist. He is best known for his work in spintronics in semiconductors. Awschalom was awarded the 2005 Oliver E Buckley Prize by the American Physical Society, and the 2005 Agilent Europhysics Prize by the European Physical Society...

    -Acting Director
  • Holly Woo-Assistant Director, Administration
  • Eva Deloa-Financial Manager
  • Bob Hanson-Building Manager
    • The building manager is responsible for the maintenance, facility resource leads, and infrastructure of CNSI. The building manager oversees any changes in infrastructure or maintenance to the labs or the building as a whole.

UCLA

Research at the California NanoSystems Institute has significant impact on important areas such as energy, the environment, health- medicine, and information technology.

Energy

Nanotechnology is being implemented to promote alternate forms of renewable energy
Renewable energy
Renewable energy is energy which comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat, which are renewable . About 16% of global final energy consumption comes from renewables, with 10% coming from traditional biomass, which is mainly used for heating, and 3.4% from...

. Research in this area has led to the development of materials that work more efficiently and are more cost effective. Nanotechnology is leading the way with developments in decreasing battery size and smaller energy sources to keep up with increasingly compacted technologies demanded by the electronics industry. Researchers have discovered not only how to capture natural energy, but also how to efficiently store and use energy at the nanoscale.

Environment

Nanotechnology research is producing solutions to many of the environmental problems faced today as well as anticipating problems before they arise. Current problems include greenhouse gas
Greenhouse gas
A greenhouse gas is a gas in an atmosphere that absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is the fundamental cause of the greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone...

 emissions being discharged into the atmosphere
Atmosphere
An atmosphere is a layer of gases that may surround a material body of sufficient mass, and that is held in place by the gravity of the body. An atmosphere may be retained for a longer duration, if the gravity is high and the atmosphere's temperature is low...

 by the combustion of fossil fuel
Fossil fuel
Fossil fuels are fuels formed by natural processes such as anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms. The age of the organisms and their resulting fossil fuels is typically millions of years, and sometimes exceeds 650 million years...

s to generate power and how to effectively use natural resources in ways that will not harm the environment. Nanotechnologies are providing many benefits as well as preserving the environment and using natural materials that will minimize the human footprint. Efforts are also under way to develop new testing and risk assessment methods to deal with the proliferation of new materials being created and catch harmful substances before damage can be done.

Health - Medicine

Nanotechnology in the arena of health and science is rapidly advancing procedures, medicines and diagnostic tools, giving hope to many patients and answers for many doctors and researchers. Nanotechnology has been used to develop sensors that aid in early cancer detection, as well as a variety of drug delivering therapeutics to treat a wide variety of diseases including heart disease
Heart disease
Heart disease, cardiac disease or cardiopathy is an umbrella term for a variety of diseases affecting the heart. , it is the leading cause of death in the United States, England, Canada and Wales, accounting for 25.4% of the total deaths in the United States.-Types:-Coronary heart disease:Coronary...

 and diabetes
Diabetes mellitus
Diabetes mellitus, often simply referred to as diabetes, is a group of metabolic diseases in which a person has high blood sugar, either because the body does not produce enough insulin, or because cells do not respond to the insulin that is produced...

. Efforts are also under way to use nanotechnology for the treatment and outbreak management of infectious disease
Infectious disease
Infectious diseases, also known as communicable diseases, contagious diseases or transmissible diseases comprise clinically evident illness resulting from the infection, presence and growth of pathogenic biological agents in an individual host organism...

s.

Information Technology

New and efficient electronic technologies are making their way from science fiction to reality. Smaller chip
Integrated circuit
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...

 sizes for computers and the ability to store more information and tools in electronics increases the ability and minimizes materials for information technology devices such as computers. With research in nanotechnology, innovations and inventions will become not only faster and more energy efficient, but smaller in size making it possible for more to fit into the palm of a hand or in the depth of a pocket.

UCSB

Current nanotechnology research being conducted on the UCSB campus is organized into three differing fields.

Biology and biomedical

The research fields of nanobiology(nanobiotechnology
Nanobiotechnology
Bionanotechnology, nanobiotechnology, and nanobiology are terms that refer to the intersection of nanotechnology and biology. Given that the subject is one that has only emerged very recently, bionanotechnology and nanobiotechnology serve as blanket terms for various related technologies.This...

) and biomedicine
Biomedicine
Biomedicine is a branch of medical science that applies biological and other natural-science principles to clinical practice,. Biomedicine, i.e. medical research, involves the study of physiological processes with methods from biology, chemistry and physics. Approaches range from understanding...

 show promise in the connection of nanoscale science to biological/nonbiological matter. New diagnostic methods as well as new ways to administer increasingly efficient disease specific treatments are also being researched and developed.

Energy efficiency

Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials, devices, or other structures possessing at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres...

 has promise to help fight global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...

. Nanoscale research can promise more efficient, less wasteful technologies. Also, nanoscale allows to control, transform and store energy more efficiently.

Information technologies

Both UCLA and UCSB CNSI labs show potential to develop upgrades in the processing, storage, and transmission of information as well as increases in the speed of information processing.

Partnerships

The California NanoSystems Institute depends on the partnerships with technological companies to help fund and run its research facilities. Partnerships fund the operation and expansions of CNSI in addition to the $250 million government research grants received in 2000. Increasing numbers of partnerships were created due to budget cuts by the state.

UCLA

CNSI has international partnerships with the Chinese Academy of Sciences
Chinese Academy of Sciences
The Chinese Academy of Sciences , formerly known as Academia Sinica, is the national academy for the natural sciences of the People's Republic of China. It is an institution of the State Council of China. It is headquartered in Beijing, with institutes all over the People's Republic of China...

, the Beijing Nano Center
National Center for Nanoscience and Technology
The National Center for Nanoscience and Technology of China is a government initiated research institute with an emphasis on nanoscience and nanotechnology.-History:...

, the University of Tokyo
University of Tokyo
, abbreviated as , is a major research university located in Tokyo, Japan. The University has 10 faculties with a total of around 30,000 students, 2,100 of whom are foreign. Its five campuses are in Hongō, Komaba, Kashiwa, Shirokane and Nakano. It is considered to be the most prestigious university...

, the University of Kyoto
Kyoto University
, or is a national university located in Kyoto, Japan. It is the second oldest Japanese university, and formerly one of Japan's Imperial Universities.- History :...

, Kyushu University
Kyushu University
Kyushu University is one of the most prestigious universities in Japan. It can be seen in the several rankings such as shown below.-General Rankings:The university has been ranked 8th in 2010 and 2009 in the ranking "Truly Strong Universities" by Toyo Keizai...

, Yonsei University
Yonsei University
Yonsei University is a Christian private research university, located in Seoul, South Korea. Established in 1885, it is one of the oldest universities in South Korea, the top private comprehensive universities in South Korea, and is widely regarded as one of the top three comprehensive...

, Seoul National University
Seoul National University
Seoul National University , colloquially known in Korean as Seoul-dae , is a national research university in Seoul, Korea, ranked 24th in the world in publications in an analysis of data from the Science Citation Index, 7th in Asia and 42nd in the world by the 2011 QS World University Rankings...

, KAIST
KAIST
KAIST , is located in Daedeok Innopolis, Daejeon, South Korea. KAIST was established by the Korean government in 1971 as the nation's first research oriented science and engineering institution. The QS-The Times World University Rankings in the year of 2009 placed KAIST 69th overall and 21st in...

 and the University of Bristol
University of Bristol
The University of Bristol is a public research university located in Bristol, United Kingdom. One of the so-called "red brick" universities, it received its Royal Charter in 1909, although its predecessor institution, University College, Bristol, had been in existence since 1876.The University is...

.

Founding partners

Partners that joined when the institute was originally created:
  • Abraxis
    Abraxis
    Abraxis Kits is a company based in Warminster Township, Pennsylvania that designs, develops and manufactures immunochemistry-based testing products for scientific research and industrial manufacturing. For industrial manufacturing, Abraxis provides Good Laboratory Practice documentation....

     Bioscience
  • BASF
    BASF
    BASF SE is the largest chemical company in the world and is headquartered in Germany. BASF originally stood for Badische Anilin- und Soda-Fabrik . Today, the four letters are a registered trademark and the company is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange, and Zurich Stock...

     The Chemical Company
  • Intel
  • HP

Associate partners

Partners that joined after creation:
  • NEC
    NEC
    , a Japanese multinational IT company, has its headquarters in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. NEC, part of the Sumitomo Group, provides information technology and network solutions to business enterprises, communications services providers and government....

  • Solarmer Energy, Inc.
    Solarmer Energy, Inc.
    Solarmer Energy, Inc. is a solar energy company that is developing polymer solar cells, a new type of solar cell; specifically, a subtype of organic photovoltaic cells...

  • Keithley Instruments
    Keithley Instruments
    Keithley Instruments is a measurement and instrument company headquartered in Solon, Ohio, that develops, manufactures, markets, and sells data acquisition products, as well as complete system solutions for high-volume production and assembly testing...

     Company
  • Photron

UCSB

  • Applied Materials
    Applied Materials
    Applied Materials, Inc. is a capital equipment producer serving the semiconductor, TFT LCD display, Glass, WEB and solar manufacturing industries....

  • Hewlett-Packard
    Hewlett-Packard
    Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...

     Labs
  • Intel
  • Microsoft Research
    Microsoft Research
    Microsoft Research is the research division of Microsoft created in 1991 for developing various computer science ideas and integrating them into Microsoft products. It currently employs Turing Award winners C.A.R. Hoare, Butler Lampson, and Charles P...

  • Sputtered Films / Tegal Corporation
  • Sun Microsystems
    Sun Microsystems
    Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...

  • VEECO

K-12

Both campuses offer several educational opportunities including hands-on laboratory research experience for junior high students and their teachers. These activities are done in collaboration with graduate students doing research in similar fields. In addition, UCSB scientists and researchers run family science nights at local junior highs to give families the opportunity to participate in scientific activities with their children. Also, CNSI runs after-school engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...

 and science club for grades 3-8 to explore science with UCSB undergrad club leaders. Finally, also CNSI hosts research opportunities for high school juniors and local Santa Barbara teachers on UCSB campus.

Undergraduate

Both UCLA and UCSB contribute to various scholarships for incoming freshman. Also, both campuses offer undergraduate courses that give insight to all fields and majors of math and science. Furthermore, undergraduates have the opportunity to act as club leaders and mentors to younger ages in K-12. Undergraduates also have extensive research opportunities in several fields during the year and through summer on either campus.

Graduate

Graduate
Postgraduate education
Postgraduate education involves learning and studying for degrees or other qualifications for which a first or Bachelor's degree generally is required, and is normally considered to be part of higher education...

 opportunities are limited to:
  • Mentoring
    • community college students
    • incoming freshman
    • high school juniors
    • high school teachers
    • undergraduates
  • Assisting researchers in the lab

See also

  • AlloSphere
    AlloSphere
    The AlloSphere is a research facility in a theatre-like pavilion in a spherical shape, of opaque material, used to project computer-generated imagery and sounds. Included are GIS, scientific, artistic, and other information...

  • STAGE
    Scientists, Technologists and Artists Generating Exploration
    Scientists, Technologists and Artists Generating Exploration was created in 2005 to encourage collaboration between artists and scientists. Originally, it began as a partnership between the Professional Artists Lab and the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California, Santa...


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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