August 13, 2001
Nanoscience workshop to cover big range of small topics
The University of Washington and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will hold their first nanoscience workshop since joining forces in the spring to form the Joint Institute for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology.
The workshop, at the Henry Art Gallery on the UW campus Thursday and Friday, is intended to initiate the collaborative projects and research that the joint institute represents, according to Viola Vogel, director of the UW Center for Nanotechnology. The workshop will cover a range of topics that includes molecular switches, protein manipulation, biomaterials that “talk” and “listen,” and nanoscience applications for photonics.
“This is the first of many such activities,” said Vogel. “Workshops like these are part of the closer and richer relationship that the joint institute will foster.”
Nanoscience is the study of materials at the molecular and atomic level, with a goal of manipulating individual atoms and molecules to build tiny machines or design materials with useful properties. Objects studied in nanoscience are measured in nanometers — one billionth of a meter or 1,000 times narrower than a human hair. Nanoscience could change the way nearly everything we know — medical devices, automobiles, computers and clothing — is designed and made.
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For more information, contact Vogel at (206) 543-1776 or vvogel@u.washington.edu, or Jayne Muir, program operations manager, Center for Nanotechnology, at (206) 616-9760 or jmuir@u.washington.edu. For a complete workshop agenda, check the Web at www.nano.washington.edu/Nanoworkshop/default.htm.
