Background

 

Nanotechnology has been heralded as a “magic bullet” in a spectrum of fields, spurring a tremendous interdisciplinary effort worldwide and in many universities, research centers, and industry. The field has received tremendous amounts of funding by government agencies such as the National Science Foundation ($770 million in 2003 and $849 million in 2004) and the National Institute of Health. The increased funding and the potential of a second industrial revolution have resulted in a lot of attention paid to the nanoscience and nanotechnology fields. The popular media have both embraced and vilified the technology.

Similarly, more and more science fiction and even fiction literature available to and written for the general public refer to nanomaterials and nanotechnology applications and affect the public perception of nanotechnology. Two specific examples that attracted publicity are “Engines of Creation : The Coming Era of Nanotechnology”¹ and “Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation”² written by K. E. Drexler, which led to the discussion of “grey goo” scenario. The “grey goo” terminology refers to a scenario where autonomous self-replicating, out-of-control nanorobots endanger life on earth. An extensive public debate between Drexler and Smalley on the accuracy and validity of Drexler's scenarios³ recently led to Drexler's⁴ admission that his scenario of “grey goo” is an unlikely threat. Despite the retraction of Drexler's hypothesis and the unfortunate 'nanophobia' that it might have engendered, we feel that students who pursue nanotechnology as a career should be carefully informed about the debate. We propose a particular strategy that combines science, engineering and social perspectives to indoctrinate students with a well-informed perspective on the current state and future developments (the promise and pitfalls) of nanotechnology.

A keyword search of the ISI Web of Knowledge database⁵ revealed an exponential increase in the number of publications with the term “nano” from 1995- 2006 with the number for 2006 extrapolated from the results obtained for the first quarter (Figure 1). Fitting the numbers with an exponential function, the prediction for 2020 is as high as 22301 publications. Similar trends are found for terms such as “nanotechnology”, “nanoscale”, and “nanoscience”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is these trends and the 2001 prediction^6,7 that there will be a need of approximately 2 million engineers and scientists in the nanotechnology area within the next decade that prompted our interest in increasing the amount of nanomaterials and nanotechnology education in the Science Division and Grove School of Engineering at the City College of New York (CCNY). The changes we have implemented in the CCNY undergraduate curriculum aim at providing to our students a realistic framework to understand what nanotechnology is and where it is going.

References: (1) Drexler, E. “Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology”; Anchor Books Editions: New York, 1986. (2) Drexler, K. E. “Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation”; John Wiley & Sons, Inc: New York, 1992. (3) Baum, R. “Nanotechnology: Drexler and Smalley Make the Case for and against 'Molecular Assemblers' ” C & E News 2003, 81, 37-42. (4) Phoenix, C.; Drexler, E. “Safe Exponential Manufacturing” Nanotech. 2004, 15, 869-872. (5) “ISI Web of Knowledge”. http://isiknowledge.com (6) Roco, M. C. “Converging Science and Technology at the Nanoscale: Opportunities for Education and Training” Nature Biotech. 2003, 21, 1247-1249. (7) Uddin, M.; Chowdhury, A. R. “Integration of Nanotechnology into the Undergraduate Engineering Curriculum” International Conference on Engineering Education 2001, Oslo, Norway, 8B2, 6-9.