POLICY NEUJS

Taiwan invests in nanotech The Taiwanese government says that it is inve~ng $290 million in a new nanatechnology research center. The center is slated to open in July 2002 and will be funded over five years to develop nanomaterials and nanoelectrcnics. Run by Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), the center will initially house around 1OO researchers, but numbers are likely to grow with future industry and academic partnerships. ITRI is already in

discussion with United Micreelectronics Corporation, as well as the region's top two universities - National Taiwan and Tsinghua. Foreign partners are also being sought. Initial work will focus on characterizing structures such as quantum dots, superlattices, nano-particles, -wires, and -tubes, before developing control and manipulation strategies. The ultimate aim is to introduce the resulting nanotechnotogies into microele~nic chips and energy storage devices.

Enabling quantum computing Turning quantum-mechanical systems into useful information processors and storage devices is the aim of a team of researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT] and the University of California at Berkeley and Davis. The five-year project, supported by $3 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is headed up by Fred Chong, Isaac Chuang and John Kubiatowicz.

Funding boost for innovative IT research The National Science Foundation (NSF) announces $156 million in awards from its Information Technology Research (ITR) priority area, which supports fundamental research and application of IT in science and engineering. The 309 awards consist of eight large projects that will

implementation, the societal impacts of IT, information management, scalable information infrastructure, and applications in science and engineering. Diverse research projects range from the University of California-Berkele~(s plans to develop 'societal scale' information systems for dealing with energy, disaster response, and education issues, to the applications in solid state physics that Clarkson University (New York) will investigate - specifically the development of quantum computing. "Through long-term, high-risk research, we expect a wide range of positive results," says NSF director Rita ColwelL "Our objective is to support the development of software and IT services that will help scientists and engineers make the kind of discoveries that will eventually be applied by industry." The NSFs third annual ITR competition is now beginning.

For ~ infennmien: http'J/www.itr.nsf.gov

receive between $5.5 million and $13.75 million over five years; 113 medium-sized projects getting from $1 million-S5 million over three to five years; and 188 smaller projects of $500,000 or less for up to three years. The major areas of interest include systems design and

A project at Brown Univers~ and University o[North Carolina-Chapel Hill will develop 'tele- immersion" technology for training surgeons. (Courtesy of Andrei State, UNC Chapel Hill).

Collaboration is also planned with Hewlett-Packard's Quantum Science Research Group. The project will build on the expertise of Chuang and colleagues at MIT, who have already created simple quantum computers, to develop design principles for more powerful and complex systems. Key stages are the demonstration of quantum gates and development of quantum algorithms, before scaling up to a workable prototype.

Patterning revolution A new research project could

revolutionize lithographic nanopatterning says Christopher 0ber, professor of

materials science end engineering at Cornell. The National Science Foundation [NSF) is providing $1.3 million over four years for

Ober, Geoffrey Coates, Uli Wiesner and Sol Grunsr to look at polymer microphotonics. External expertise comes in the form of Edwin Thomas at the Maseachusett~ Institute of Technology; Nitash Balsera at the University of California- Berkeley; and industry partners from Rohm & Haas and Wright Materials Lab. Block copolymer electro-optic structures in two- and three- dimensions could open up new stra~gies for integrating so~ materials into l~aditional semiconductor platforms. Patterning of block copolymers could improve size control - enabling irCrica~ ~ e s and functions not possible with c o ~ ~ .

18 ~ November/December 2001