The National Science Foundation (NSF) has designated a 13-member consortium as the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN), creating the world’s largest and most accessible nanoscale “laboratory,” under the leadership of Cornell engineers.

The consortium will enable university students and researchers, as well as scientists from corporate and government laboratories, to have open access to resources they need for studying molecular and higher length-scale materials and processes and applying them in a variety of structures, devices, and systems.

Letters go up on the exterior of Duffield Hall, the new nano research facility that is home to the CNF.

Named to lead NNIN is Sandip Tiwari, director of the NSF-funded Cornell Nanoscale Facility (CNF), a national user facility on campus. NSF funding to the new network is expected to be $70 million or higher for five years, beginning in January 2004, with the possibility of a five-year renewal.

Other consortium members who will share their specialized facilities are Georgia Institute of Technology; Harvard University; Howard University; Pennsylvania State University; Stanford University; Triangle National Lithographic Center (operated by North Carolina State University and University of North Carolina); University of California, Santa Barbara; University of Michigan; University of Minnesota; University of New Mexico; University of Texas at Austin; and University of Washington, Seattle.

NSF Engineering Adviser Lawrence Goldberg said the new network is a significant expansion of the capabilities of the decade-old, five-university National Nanofabrication Users Network, which it replaces. “NNIN will implement, on a national scale, innovation in education that will impact all levels from professional through K–12, include outreach efforts to nontraditional users, reach underrepresented groups, and disseminate knowledge to the wider technical community and public. It will also develop the intellectual and institutional capacity needed to examine and address societal and ethical implications of nanotechnology,” he said.

Noting the need for discovery-driven research at a time when most industry research is mission- and profit-oriented, and the need for finding a balance, Tiwari, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell, observed: “In the experimental science and engineering research at the nano- and micro-scale, exciting interdisciplinary research depends on sharing the diverse resources, techniques, tools, and knowledge from various disciplines and institutions so that researchers can follow their own interests. This network brings together these resources for the overall good of the nation and is critical to the success of research in this new environment.”

—Roger Segelken, Cornell News Service