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The DOE Nanoscale Science
Research Centers Address Four Key Needs
The idea for the Centers was born in a
March 1999 meeting organized by the late Iran Thomas,
then Director of the Division of Materials Sciences
and Engineering in the Office of Science’s Office
of Basic Energy Sciences. The outcome of that meeting
was a report entitled “Nanoscale
Science, Engineering and Technology Research Directions,”
and its Appendix described the proposed Centers for
the first time. The Centers would address four critical
needs:
- By providing a suite of materials
characterization and synthesis tools co-located with
the x-ray and neutron scattering facilities, the Centers
would permit full and efficient use of these national
resources for investigations of nanoscale materials
and structures.
- By co-locating researchers in chemistry,
physics, materials sciences, biology, computation,
electron microscopy and more, the Centers would enable
and facilitate very highly interdisciplinary research,
thus changing the paradigm of discpinary-oriented
organizational structures within the DOE Laboratories.
- By operating as national user facilities,
the Centers would provide the infrastructure support
(scientific collaboration, technical support personnel,
laboratory support, and common instrumentation) that
visiting scientists require in order to efficiently
conduct high quality nanomaterials research.
- By providing all of the above, the
Centers would help educate a new generation of young
scientists, which will be the first to receive the
truly interdisciplinary training that is needed for
nanotechnology. Such intellectual capital is probably
the most important long-term investment for science
and technology.
Subsequent planning for the Centers, including
the selection of research thrusts and instrument suites,
drew on substantial participation by the research community,
largely though a series of widely advertised open workshops.
Nearly 2,000 researchers attended these workshops, about
half of them from the academic community.
In response to the requests of prospective
users who attended the initial workshops, each Center
began a limited-scope user research program in fiscal
year 2003.
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