Nanofabrication research funding is discussed at anniversary symposium

From left, Joseph Ballantyne, director of the Cornell Nanofabrication Facility; Edward Wolf, professor emeritus and first director of the facility; and David Catalfamo, deputy commissioner of New York's Empire State Development Corp., meet before Catalfamo's luncheon address Sept. 18 in the Statler Ballroom. Frank DiMeo/University Photography

By Bill Steele

Nanofabrication isn't just about making computer chips any more. The ability to manufacture devices smaller than a blood cell has applications in medicine, molecular biology, agriculture and even the social sciences and humanities, according to participants in the Cornell Nanofabrication Facility's 20th anniversary symposium held last week.

The symposium, which ran from Wednesday, Sept. 16, through Friday, brought together university researchers, industry representatives and government officials for a look into the future of nanotechnology. Their basic conclusion: They all still need each other. In between show-and-tell sessions about the latest research, much of the talk was about how research would be done, by whom and, especially, how it would be funded.

Sir Alec Broers, vice chancellor of England's Cambridge University, kicked off the three-day event on Wednesday by delivering the Henri Sack Memorial Lecture, "Today's University/Industry Partnership: What Works? What Doesn't Work?" What doesn't work today, he said, is an individual researcher working on a small scale.

"Developments today don't come out of the blue," he said. "They come out of focused effort. Most technical advances have been made by research teams supported by large enterprises." As an example he cited the transistor, not a lucky discovery, he said, but the result of a deliberate research effort by Bell Labs to create a solid-state amplifier.

Today, he said, the ideas of academics and industry researchers must be combined. And after reviewing several approaches to funding, he concluded that the most productive approach is to have industry fund academic research but at the same time have its own scientists participate actively in that research. This way, he said, industry scientists can stay in touch with what's happening in the field, while university scientists can get feedback on what's useful.

Nevertheless, he added, small, university-funded research is still important as a way to explore totally new ideas.

And government has to stay in the act, too, said John Hopcroft, the Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering at Cornell, who kicked off a Thursday afternoon panel discussion. Since it takes 30 to 40 years for a scientific breakthrough to grow into a major business, he said, industry can't see an immediate return on investment in basic research. Government still has to support basic research, he said, with the added benefit that this support helps to train the next generation of scientists.

Hopcroft pointed out that the techniques originally developed to build electronic circuits on tiny silicon chips also can be used to make tiny tools and instruments for use in any discipline that deals with the very small. In particular, he said, it will have an important role to play in the university's coming emphasis on molecular biology.

The symposium concluded with a luncheon address by David Catalfamo, senior deputy commissioner of New York's Empire State Development Corp., who emphasized the bottom line. Catalfamo also is acting executive director of the New York State Science and Technology Foundation. He displayed impressive statistics about economic growth in New York, which he said results mainly from tax reductions and other incentives offered to businesses.

But he emphasized that part of the state's strategy is also to encourage innovation and new technology that could build future businesses. For example, it funds goal-oriented research through programs like the state-funded Centers for Advanced Technology, which includes the Cornell biotechnology center.

State support is intended to produce economic growth by encouraging business startups and helping existing businesses to become more competitive and more profit
able, he explained. "We look at it as an investment, not a grant," Catalfamo said. And in evaluating the results, "We're not going to measure activity, we're going to measure impact," he said.

The Cornell Nanofabrication Facility came into being in 1978 as the National Research and Resource Facility for Submicron Structures, funded by the National Science Foundation. Today it is part of a network of five such centers nationwide, known as the National Nanofabrication Users Network.

It operates state-of-the-art facilities for the manufacture of microcircuits and other tiny structures housed in the Knight Laboratory, which was built in the early 1980s with an endowment from Lester B. Knight '29.