An official website of the United States government.
Nanotechnology solves global challenges by generating and applying new multidisciplinary knowledge of nanoscale phenomena and engineered nanoscale materials, structures, and products. The data underlying this new knowledge are vast, disconnected, and challenging to integrate into the broad scientific body of knowledge. This signature initiative, Nanotechnology Knowledge Infrastructure: Enabling National Leadership in Sustainable Design, will leverage and extend existing and emerging resources, programs, and technologies to create an infrastructure to accelerate the vetting of new knowledge and to enable effective data utilization.
Four areas that will benefit from focused attention were identified:1) A diverse collaborative community of scientists, engineers, and technical staff to support research, development, and applications of nanotechnology to meet national challenges; 2) An agile modeling network for multidisciplinary intellectual collaboration that effectively couples experimental basic research, modeling, and applications development; 3) A sustainable cyber-toolbox to enable effective application of models and knowledge to nanomaterials design; and 4) A robust digital nanotechnology data and information infrastructure to support effective data sharing, collaboration, and innovation across disciplines and applications.
Overall, this signature initiative will coordinate the nanoscale science, engineering, and technology communities around the fundamental, interconnected elements of collaborative modeling, a cyber-toolbox, and data infrastructure that will capitalize on American strengths in innovation, shorten the time from research to new product development, and maintain U.S. leadership in sustainable design of engineered nanoscale materials.
