The Benefits of Being a Partner

Although the development of nanoscience and nanotechnology is in its infancy and many of the payoffs won't be realized for some time, the corporate community has already voiced a strong interest in this work. There are three reasons for this:

• Many advanced technology companies see that the science and engineering of nanosystems are key to developing the information technologies and molecular medicine of the 21st century.
• To understand biological or inorganic nanostructured materials requires integrated approaches in characterization, analysis, modeling, and data handling. Initial development of such approaches can be effectively explored in the CNSI's academic setting.
• The CNSI will provide training for both the new and the existing scientific and engineering workforce in the cross-disciplinary field of nanosystems.

During the preparation of the CNSI proposal, the UCLA and UCSB team worked with more than 30 companies, most of them California-based or operating in the state. These companies ranged widely in size and in business interests, from information technology giants such as Hewlett Packard and IBM to smaller, more specialized biotech companies such as Ceres and Sequenom. More than half of the companies have offered significant resources to the CNSI, primarily due to their own long-term interests.

To enhance and enrich the effectiveness of these partnerships, the CNSI has worked to develop the physical, intellectual, and organizational environment of the Institute. The state-of-the-art research equipment planned for the new CNSI facility will be available to all corporate and academic partners.

The CNSI will establish dedicated, flexible "incubator" laboratories in transitional and permanent facilities where industry researchers and CNSI faculty and students can work together on pre-competitive projects. The Institute's Board of Trustees will include representatives from the CNSI industry partners, and the Board will evaluate the Institute leadership on the results of its industrial collaborations. Industry partners participate in strategic planning, and guide the development and operation of facilitiesudents. At the research level, corporate involvement within the CNSI will be driven by personal and the graduate education program. Vendor partners will also be a primary recruiter of CNSI st interaction and relationships built around specific projects.

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