Thursday, July 16, 2009

Nano@Tech: Past and Future

It is always difficult to assess quantitatively how you are doing when you undertake an enterprise that involves communication, marketing, and outreach. How many people are receiving your message? How are they responding to it? What is the impact you are making? The answers to these questions can be used to refine your approach, if necessary, and sometimes they even provide you a gentle pat on the back for a job well done.

As Nanotechnology Research Center friends and users know, Nano@Tech is a seminar series, open to the entire community, held at Georgia Tech on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month during the academic year. Since our featured speakers come from all of the disciplines involved in nanotechnology research, education, commercialization, and policy, the seminars provide an excellent opportunity to stimulate interdisciplinary collaboration.

For the last several years, we have videotaped most of these seminars and posted them on the SMARTech website, which is Georgia Tech’s archive of scholarly materials. Since these videos are quite large (some > 100 MB in size), requiring both an interest and commitment to download them for viewing, I was surprised to learn that they have attracted an on-line audience (90% of whom found the site via a Google search). For the 12 seminar videos from the 2008-09 academic year, there have been more than 800 downloads (so far). These statistics suggest that Nano@Tech is making an impact outside our immediate attending audience.

The Fall 2009 series will begin in a few weeks. If you can join us in person, please mark your calendars using the schedule below. More information will be coming for those on the email list, and if you want to get on this list just send me an email at david.gottfried@nrc.gatech.edu.

Aug. 25 - Alan Porter (GT-Public Policy)
Sept. 8 - Tom O'Brien/Swami Rajaraman (Axion Biosystems)
Sept. 22 - Devin Brown (GT-NRC)
Oct. 13 - Jason Nadler (GTRI)
Oct. 27 - Gang Bao (GT-BME)
Nov. 10 - Margaret Kosal (GT-Int'l. Affairs)
Dec. 8 - Gangli Wang (GSU-Chemistry)

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

So You Want to be in Show Business

A few months ago (May 8), I posted the results of a nanotechnology video contest sponsored by ACS Nanotation. Well all you right brain (creative) types, the next NanoTube Video Contest, with the theme of “How will nano change the world?”, has been announced and is accepting submissions. For details, see the information below from ACS.


In our last video contest "What is Nano?", you showed us that nano is a way of making things smaller, lighter and more efficient, making it possible to build better machines, solar cells, materials and radios. But another question remains: how exactly is "nano" going to impact both us and the world? We want you to think BIG about nano and show us how nano will address the challenges we face today.

  • What can nano do for global security?
  • What can nano do for the environment?
  • What can nano do for sustainable energy?
  • What can nano do for fighting disease?
  • What can nano do for the products you use?
  • What can nano do for YOU?

ACS Nanotation is interested to hear what you think, and to find out, we are sponsoring a video contest. Submit your videos to NanoTube and you could win up to $500 in cash!

The contest will open July 6, 2009 for video submissions and close August 9, 2009. See the contest rules and guidelines or contact acsnano@acs.org with any questions.