 Goal - To promote interdisciplinary research in molecular engineering, which involves the discovery, tailoring, and synthesis of functional molecules and supramolecular architectures enabling the fabrication of useful or high value-added products, components, and systems by design
 Focus on clean energy and translational biotechnology/medicine
 Enabled by a new $120M, 160,000 sq. ft. Molecular Engineering building
 Goal - To build leadership for the nanotechnology workforce of tomorrow o Builds on previous IGERT that established the first dual Ph.D degree in
Nanotechnology in the nation in 2001 o 57 graduates and 53 students currently enrolled o Ten participating departments: Biochem, BioE, ChemE, Chemistry, EE, Genome
Sciences, MSE, Microbiology, Physics, Physiology and Biophysics o Emphasizes disciplinary tracks: academia, national labs, industry, entrepreneurship
 Goal - To provide a comprehensive web resource for faculty to use in incorporating social and ethical issues in nanotechnology education o Highlights the importance of ethics training for the emerging nanotech workforce o Provides faculty with free access to instructional materials in different formats o Encourage students to contemplate the ethical implications of their research o Provides a centralized resource for nanoethics teaching materials
 Goal - To provide academic and industrial users with cutting-edge tools for fabrication and characterization a the nanoscale
 UW-NNIN consists of the Nanotech User Facility and Microfabrication Lab o Staffed facility (8 scientists and engineers) operating as cost center o 18,000 sq. ft of laboratory space including 10,000 sq. ft. of cleanroom o Extensive suite of fabrication and characterization tools
 Areas of leadership within the NNIN network: o Nanotechnology for biological and life sciences o Nanotechnology for ocean sciences o Societal and ethical implications of nanotechnology
 320 unique users and 31 companies served in 2009-10
 Goal - To use engineered peptides and proteins to synthesize and assemble functional hybrid materials and structures o One Interdisciplinary Research Group focusing on Molecular Biomimetics o Faculties from 5 departments: MSE, ChemE, Chemistry, EE, Microbiology
 Research areas: o Selection and engineering of inorganic binding peptides o Fundamentals of peptide-inorganic interactions o Computational biology and bioinformatics o Natural and designer proteins as molecular templates o Bioinorganic phases and synthesis o Bio-enabled nanophotonics
 Goal - To provide pre-doctoral, doctoral, and MD fellows with cutting-edge, interdisciplinary, and translational training to solve complex cancer problems o Three institutions: UW, FHCRC and Children’s Hospital o Ten departments: MSE, ChemE, BioE, Neurological Surgery, Radiology,
Molecular Cell Biology, Surgery, Chemistry, Physics, Clinical Research o 40 faculties and about 15 interdisciplinary projects
Normal Cells Cancer Cells MRI
Nuclei
NP
Membrane
 Research areas: o Targeted therapies and molecular imaging for brain tumors, leukemia/lymphoma, breast cancer and hepatocellular melanoma o Early cancer detection: single molecule and cell detection, blood miRNA analysis for colon and prostate cancer
 Goal - To utilize in vitro and in vivo models of airway exposure to aerosolized quantum dot nanoparticles to: o Define the physical and chemical characteristics that govern their absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion and toxicity o Using multiple inbred strains of mice, map toxicity pathways associated with these characteristics o Incorporate the information that is obtained from these in vitro and in vivo models into a risk assessment paradigm that will be used to predict nanomaterial toxicity to humans
 Goal – To develop disruptive technologies based upon new organic and hybrid materials that are processed into devices at low cost o Synthesize new electro-optic materials and devices with enhanced properties including bandwidth, drive voltage, optical loss, power consumption, and stability o Implement new infrared light sources, amplifiers, and detectors based on organic and hybrid opto-electronic materials o Seamlessly integrating materials and devices from the nano to the microscale
Darkfield Fluorescence
 Goal – To develop an accelerated direct-write nanomanufacturing method called
"orchestrated structure evolution, in which a direct-write tool is used to pattern a small number of growth "seeds” planted at mathematically predicted locations are subsequently grow into the final pattern.
MODEL EXPERIMENT COMPARISON
10 μm
 Three major institutions: UW, Georgia Tech and University of Arizona
5 um
Diffusion limited Volmer-Weber growth of copper from e-beam patterned nanoelectrode seeds: model using a Greens Function formulation and Voronoi diagram, and experiment.
 Team of 5 investigators affiliated with 4 departments: ChemE, EE, Chemistry, MSE