Speakers

Dr. Siegel is the Robert W. Hunt Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and founding Director of the Nanotechnology Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is also founding Director of the National Science Foundation Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center for Directed Assembly of Nanostructures.

He was graduated from Williams College in 1958 with an AB degree in physics and received an MS degree in physics in 1960 and a PhD degree in metallurgy in 1965 from the University of Illinois in Urbana. After two years of post-doctoral materials research at Cornell University, Dr. Siegel served from 1966 to 1976 on the faculty of the State University of New York at Stony Brook in the Department of Materials Science. He was a research scientist in the Materials Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory from 1974 to 1995, serving for most of that time as group leader in the areas of metal physics and defects in metals and as a research program manager.

Dr. Siegel has been a visiting professor in Germany, Israel, India, Switzerland and Japan and has been active in local, national, and international professional organizations. He was a member of the Nanotechnology Technical Advisory Group of the US President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology during 2003-09. Dr. Siegel previously chaired the World Technology Evaluation Center worldwide study on nanostructure science and technology during 1996-98 that led to the US National Nanotechnology Initiative in 2001. He was also past chairman (1992-96) of the International Committee on Nanostructured Materials.

Dr. Siegel has authored or co-authored over 270 publications and several patents (13 issued, 4 pending) in the areas of defects in metals, diffusion, and nanostructured metal, ceramic, composite, and biomaterials. He has presented more than 480 invited lectures around the world, and has also edited ten books, on these subjects. Dr. Siegel is a founder and Director of the publicly-held Nanophase Technologies Corporation, and was recognized for this effort by a 1991 US Federal Laboratory Consortium Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer. He is an MRS Fellow and also an Honorary Member of the Materials Research Societies of India and Japan. Dr. Siegel was a 1994 recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Senior Research Award in Germany, and in 2001 was named a RIKEN Eminent Scientist in Japan.

Great strides have been made worldwide over the past two decades in our ability to create nanostructured materials and devices with novel properties and functionalities. The novel properties of these nanostructures are derived from the confined sizes and very large surface-to-volume ratios of their nanoscale constituents. The former give rise to unique size-dependent properties in the nanoscale (1-100 nm) regime, while the latter give rise to the ability of nanoscale additions to conventional material matrices to dramatically change the host material’s properties. Examples are nanomaterials that possess enhanced mechanical, electrical, optical, and bioactive properties, as well as multifunctional combinations thereof. Specific examples of such nanomaterial systems constituted of nanoparticles, nanotubes, and hybrid structures containing these and biomolecules will be described. A perspective of this important and growing research area will be presented in terms of the successes in nanotechnology over the past decade and those to be expected in the coming decade. Some opportunities and challenges facing the worldwide research community in this area will be considered.

Mr. John R. McDougall, a leader in Canadian science and technology policy and innovation, was appointed as NRC's President in April 2010. Born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta and honoured as one of the province's 50 most influential citizens, Mr. McDougall's career spans many sectors, with a broad and far reaching range of accomplishments and roles to his credit.

Until recently, Mr. McDougall served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Alberta Research Council (ARC), a position he has held for the past 12 years.

Mr. McDougall's career began with a decade served as a petroleum engineer. This quickly evolved into the ownership and management of an international engineering consulting firm. Following this, he held a number of influential positions with some of Canada's most innovative research and manufacturing businesses, consortium and not-for-profit organizations.

Always an active participant in professional and community affairs, Mr. McDougall has contributed to a number of prominent advisory boards and committees, both on the provincial and federal levels during the course of his 43-year career.

He was a member of the NRC-Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP) Advisory Board from 2002 to 2006 and also contributed to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the AUTO21 Network of Centres of Excellence, the Edmonton Space & Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Advisory Committee.

A fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineers and Engineers Canada, Mr. McDougall has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Alberta, with a number of postgraduate courses in Environmental Engineering to his credit. From 1991 to 1997, he served as the university's first Poole Chair in Management for Engineers, a leadership position within the Faculty of Engineering.

Mr. McDougall was founding Chair and President of Innoventures Canada.

Nanotechnology is an enabler that spans a broad range of applications from construction to health care and from manufacturing to communications. Innovations in nanotechnology will have an impact on a wide array of applications, from materials sciences and biomedicine to ICT, itself an enabling technology. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Canada ranked in the top eight countries in terms of filing nano-related patents in the period 2005-09.[1] Canada shows particular strength in nanoelectronics, an area that may help Canada’s ICT industry to recover from the current downturn.

Equally important will be the standards required to bring these new technologies to market: The Conference Board of Canada estimates that the development of new standards creates 17% of the growth in labour productivity or 9% of growth overall.[2] A key challenge will be to ensure that metrology is in place to ensure the repeatability of results and permit the manufacturing of nano-based products in the future, as well as establishing safety standards for the handling of nanomaterials and their by-products.

Dr. Lajos (Lou) Balogh is Chief Scientific Advisor and Principal of AA Nanomedicine and Nanotechnology (AANM). AANM provides scientific project and small business plan critiques, feasibility assessment and technology due diligence for investors in Nanomedicine, Nanobiotechnology, and Nanotechnology since 2000.

Dr. Balogh received his Ph.D. from the Kossuth L. University, Hungary in Chemical Technology and was invited to the University of Massachusetts Lowell in 1991 as a Visiting Professor. Later he worked at the Michigan Molecular Institute as a senior scientist, and had faculty appointments in the Departments of Internal Medicine and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor and the University at Buffalo, SUNY. As a former Co-Director of the NanoBiotechnology Center and Director of Nanotechnology Research in the Department of Radiation Medicine at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, he has authored or coauthored over 150 scientific publications, 1 book and six book chapters in addition to 12 patents in various disciplines.

Dr. Balogh is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology and Medicine (Elsevier) and member of numerous USA, European, and International expert committees, including NIH NANO and EPA Nanotechnology study sections and NIH Small Business Study Sections since 1993. He is also a member of the Steering Committee of the American National Standard Institute Nanotechnology Panel, and serves on the US Technical Advisory Committee to the International Standard Organization on Nanotechnology (TC-229). Lou is one of the five Founders of the American Society for Nanomedicine.

Nanobiotechnology is developing novel and better approaches and solutions that have the potential to forever change how patients are diagnosed and treated in the next decade. Nanomedicine will transform clinical medicine and change the way pharmaceutical commercialization and business is done. Apart from the great promises of the relevant sciences and developing technologies, there are several challenges for this paradigm-changing field, especially in the areas of communication, commercialization, safety, regulations, standardization, education, and public policies. Whether nanobiotechnology becomes a successful “nanobusiness,” ultimately will depend on whether or not we can solve and harmonize present issues in the above fields. In this talk, the latest developments in nanobiotechnology and nanomedicine will be summarized, including popular discussion topics, i.e., “personalized medicine” and “theranostics”, and market trends along with the introduction of a number of nanomedicines approved by FDA and commercialized by pharmaceutical companies.

Josée Blanchard holds a doctorate in molecular biology as well as an MBA in finance from the Université de Sherbrooke. She began her career in life sciences venture capital, first at Innovatech and later at the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. Dr. Blanchard then explored business development with foreign investors as well as economic development, working with Investissement Québec, among others. For almost two years now, she has been working as Director of business development for the Life Sciences cluster for Sherbrooke’s local development center, Sherbrooke Innopole. Dr. Blanchard’s mandate is to participate in local business development, attract foreign investment, serve as a liaison between industrial partners, and promote collaboration between businesses and institutions, both regionally and internationally.

Thanks to her experience and achievements at BIOPOLIS QUÉBEC1, Dr. Blanchard maintains excellent access to life sciences firms that use or could use nanotechnology in product development. She hopes to help NanoQuébec build stronger ties with the biotechnology sector.

As CNSE Vice President for Academic Affairs and CNSE Chief Academic Officer, Professor Geer leads the development and implementation of the College’s academic degree and outreach programs. As a founding faculty member of UAlbany’s CNSE, Professor Geer also leads various research projects in the fields of nanoelectronics, nanomaterials, and nanometrology. Current areas of interest include investigations of self-assembling, Si-based molecular wires and devices for next generation integrated circuits, and development of nanoscale metrology tools for measurement and characterization of nanodevice structures including nano-acoustic imaging systems for carbon nanotubes, nanobelts and nanowires, and nano-optical systems for strain metrology in advanced CMOS device structures. Professor Geer also directs R&D programs in nanoparticle-based planarization processing for computer-chip manufacturing.

Professor Geer’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, IBM, AMD, the Office of Naval Research, the New York State Office of Academic Research and Technology, the Dow Chemical Company, the Dow-Corning Corporation, W. L. Gore, Inc., the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Raytheon Vision Systems, the Microelectronics Advanced Research Corporation (MARCO), and the Nanoelectronics Research Corporation (NERC).

Professor Geer has developed and taught a wide array of graduate courses and workshop short courses on nanomechanics and nanometrology. He is involved with high-school and undergraduate outreach efforts in workforce development and nanotechnology education at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering including the first SEMI Workforce Development Institute program for high school students held on the East Coast. Professor Geer received his Ph.D. in Condensed Matter Physics from the University of Minnesota in 1992. He was awarded a National Research Council Research Fellowship for the study of molecular self-assembly at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. He joined the staff of the Naval Research Laboratory in 1995 as a research physicist before accepting a faculty position at the University at Albany in 1996. Professor Geer has presented over 50 papers at technical conferences and has published more than 50 articles, book chapters, or proceedings on nanoscale materials and nanoscale characterization.

This overview intends to identify societal trends and technological hurdles as well as breakthroughs that will drive innovation and development in the semiconductor industry. Fundamentally, we see two concurrent mega-trends.

First, for the foreseeable future, Moore’s law will continue unabated. The execution of a commercially viable set of technology nodes at 11nm and below will drive the introduction of novel material systems at an unprecedented pace. To maintain economic viability, a well-conceived process and chip development model, tuned for repeatable technology introduction every two years, plus a migration to the next wafer size (450nm) are critical. We will highlight the role that the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) plays in this ecosystem, leveraging industry partners, and academic and government resources in effective partnerships to enable accelerated R&D.

Secondly, epitomized by the advent of “More than Moore”, we see the emergence of semiconductor systems merged together via advanced packaging using 3D Through-Silicon-Vias (TSV). TSVs allow the introduction of truly heterogeneous systems, where analog, radio-frequency, memory, micro-electro-mechanical, optical or even biological chips can be combined with advanced CMOS to offer novel capabilities. Combined with the societal trend of “connected everywhere” and “smart planet”, we foresee large commercial opportunities and the potential for game changing new solutions to emerge.