Alberta is poised to become a very big player in the science of the very small.

The new, $120-million National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT) at the University of Alberta will attract world-class scientists, create 150 permanent highly skilled research jobs and provide training for hundreds of students every year.

“NINT will be a state-of-the-art research facility that certainly will be in the top 10 nanotechnology centres in North America,” says Dan Wayner, NINT’s acting director general.

“This is the most focused activity in the country right now” in the fast-emerging scientific field.

Jack Dagley photo, for Business Edge
Dan Wayner, NINT’s acting director general, says the institute will work with private sector to create economic spinoffs.

David Lynch, dean of engineering at the U of A, predicts that NINT “is going to be a tremendous creation of true critical mass in the area of nanotechnology for the
country.”

Nanotechnology is the science of manipulating matter at the molecule-sized or nano-scale level. A key goal is to build
materials, machines and systems that are 10,000 times smaller than a human hair.

Potential “nanoproducts” include tiny robots that patrol the bloodstream repairing or destroying damaged cells, supercomputers no larger than sugar cubes, and molecular scrubbers to remove poisonous hydrogen sulphide in sour natural gas and carbon dioxide from industrial emissions.

Economists predict the economic impact of nanotechnology will reach $100 billion US a year within a decade. In the Edmonton area alone, it’s expected to generate 100 new companies and 15,000 new jobs by 2012.

NINT, temporarily located on one floor of the U of A’s new Electrical and Computer Engineering Research Facility, will move into its own 180,000-sq.-ft. building by the end of 2005.

NINT will be Canada’s flagship institute for nanotechnologies, Wayner says.

Its work will encompass fundamental research, education, technology development and commercialization of nano-sized products and processes.

The institute’s research activities will begin this fall. One of its key goals is to create new opportunities for post-secondary education and training for highly skilled research jobs.

“At the graduate levels, this will be a tremendous addition to our current (research) efforts,” says engineering dean Lynch.

“It will truly touch on every discipline of engineering, and on most disciplines in science, medicine, pharmacy and
others.”

When NINT is fully operational, up to 250 graduate and visiting students will be working on nanotech.

That will be at least double the number of U of A students now engaged in nanotech research and projects, Lynch notes.

Even at the undergraduate level, he adds, “we’re seeing an incredible amount of enthusiasm and interest by students to get involved in aspects of nanotechnology.”

NINT is a partnership among the National Research Council, the Alberta government and the U of A.

The partners have committed $120 million over the first five years. Alberta’s share is $60 million, while the federal government’s contribution is $60 million plus $12 million for ongoing operating costs after year five.

The U of A has allocated 15 positions in the prestigious Canada Research Chairs program to nanotechnology – including 12 to be filled over the next three years.

The university will hire another five faculty members in areas that complement the new nanotech research positions.
Lynch says new university courses are already being designed, and others re-tooled, to focus on and include aspects of nanotechnology.

He predicts that in the near future, the U of A will offer undergraduate degrees in nanotechnology science and engineering.

So new is the field, he notes, “when you see a new undergraduate student coming out of high school to an engineering program . . . the entire world of nanotechnology awaits them.”

Wayner says NINT will be integrated with the U of A, including joint appointments for new researchers with both the university and the National Research Council (NRC).

That means students will learn in a team-oriented environment, where the fundamental research done at universities is coupled with the more commercially driven work of the NRC.

“That’s a tremendous learning opportunity for them,” Wayner says.

NINT will also link with technical and community colleges, including NAIT in Edmonton and SAIT in Calgary, to establish training programs for the highly skilled workers that will be needed by spin-off nanotech companies.

“Economic Development Edmonton is working by our side as we start to look at how we capitalize on the potential economic impact,” Wayner says.

Wayner, an NRC nanotechnology scientist, and the U of A are
collaborating on luring some of the world’s top researchers to NINT.

This core of world-class scientists will be critical in shaping the institute’s ongoing research, technology and commercialization programs.

NINT’s planned research activities will focus on three areas of strategic importance to Alberta’s economic diversification, and where the province has internationally recognized strengths in science and technology.

They are life sciences, information and communications technologies, and energy.

Wayner says he wants NINT, working with the private sector, to have at least one commercial nanotechnology application on the market within five years.

“We have to translate frontier research to economic impact.”

By 2007, the goal for the institute is to have up to 40 principal researchers and a total of about 150 staff.

“We hope that by having the best and brightest minds working here, we will hit the home runs and nucleate this cluster of nanotechnology firms,” Wayner says.