What will government do for nanotechnology?

Government will play the key role in assuring that the enormous benefits of nanotechnology will be realized quickly and the U.S. will share the global benefits. The goals of nanotechnology are too long term (greater than ten years) for industry to take an immediate leadership role, although the high level of industry interest and concern for the field is almost unprecedented. Because of its interdisciplinary nature, the development of nanotechnology requires creating teams of physicists, chemists, biologists, and engineers to tackle the problems, and the funding agencies will need to be organized to foster this teamwork. The enabling infrastructure and technologies must be in place for industry to take advantage of nanotechnology innovations and discoveries. Industry is frequently reluctant to invest in risky research that takes many years to develop into a product. In the US the university and government research system fills this gap. The increasing pace of technological commercialization requires a compression of past time scales and parallel development of research and commercial products and a synergy among industry, university, and government partners. New infrastructure at the universities and national labs is required for the field to grow. A worldwide competition is underway, and the US response is fragmented in comparison to the approach of European and Asian countries. For all of these reasons, this is a moment of opportunity to create an inter-agency initiative in nanotechnology to catalyze academe, industry, health, business, and national security efforts.