Principal Investigator Michael Cima
Co-investigators Gang Chen , Gloria Choi , Kwanghun Chung , James Collins , Jerome Connor , Patrick Doyle , Nicholas Fang , Yoel Fink , William Freeman , Nuh Gedik , Lee Gehrke , Ruonan Han , Anastasios Hart , Thomas Heldt , Harold Hemond , Kyung-Han (Kyle) Hong , Juejun Hu , Qing Hu , Alan Jasanoff , Lynette Jones , Rohit Karnik , Timothy Lu , Scott Manalis , Gareth McKinley , Rosalind Picard , Ramesh Raskar , Hadley Sikes , Peter So , Michael Strano , Timothy Swager , Vivienne Sze , Luis Velasquez-Garcia (Heller) , Andrew Whittle , Xuanhe Zhao
Project Website http://mitnano.mit.edu/
MIT will construct, at the heart of the campus, a new 200,000-square-foot center for nanoscience and nanotechnology. An advanced facility open to the entire community of faculty, researchers, and students. A convening space to spark collaboration and cross-pollination. A hive for tinkering with atoms, one by one—and for constructing, from these fantastically small building blocks, a future of infinite possibility.
Students and faculty are calling for MIT.nano because it will enable them to do more—more research, more experiments, more innovation -- and to make more headway in their deep and passionate commitment to serve the world.
MIT.nano will accelerate the pace of research at the Institute. It will modernize our research capacity and support vital research thrusts for decades to come. And it will lead to the innovative technologies and imaginative solutions that will define our era.
MIT.nano is one of the highest priorities for President L. Rafael Reif and the Deans of the Schools of Science and Engineering.
MIT.nano will:(*) Create a single facility with complete nano capabilities(*) Place a world-class, shared tool set at the heart of the campus(*) Create a nexus for collaboration and cross-disciplinary problem-solving(*) Educate the next generation of leaders(*) Power innovation at MIT—and around the world
The unique research spaces within MIT.nano will make it an unparalleled workshop for tinkering with nanoscale, nurturing discovery, sparking invention, and propelling hard-tech startups. A nanometer is a mere one billionth of a meter. If you were to travel 50,000 nanometers, you’d only be halfway across the width of a human hair. But researchers have discovered that matter at this scale behaves in revolutionary ways. Twenty-five years of intensive research now gives us the power to reshape our world from the nanoscale up. It’s like lifting a corner of the periodic table and discovering another version underneath—one that lists the same elements, but with entirely new properties for the compounds and materials they form.
Faculty in departments across MIT are now taking advantage of the new power to synthesize and manipulate molecules with breathtaking precision. Everywhere they look, our faculty and students see thrilling potential for impact in areas like computing and communications, energy, health and health care, manufacturing, materials and structures, prototyping, sustainable futures, and toolmaking.
MIT.nano is rising on the current site of Building 12, next to the Great Dome and just steps away from those who need it -- currently estimated at more than 2,000 researchers per year.