Jagannathan “Jag” Sankar had a common mishap. “This morning, I spilled coffee on my tie,” he says. But Sankar, a North Carolina A&T State University professor, faults his garment, not his clumsiness, for the stain. “What if I want a material that didn’t absorb coffee?”
Creating the material Sankar wants requires rearranging atoms and molecules at the nanometer (a billionth of a meter) scale to make a nonstick coating for textiles. The science and innovation behind this is called nanotechnology.
It’s not necessarily a new technology, Sankar says. Plants, such the lotus, already use a special combination of molecules to make waterproof leaves, causing water to bead up and roll off. What is new, however, is our ability to control, harness, and reap the benefits of working at the nanometer level.
Sankar and his team of scientists at the Center for Advanced Materials and Smart Structures (CAMSS) at NC A&T are working on a slew of problems more important than stained ties. For example, some scientists are looking for new ways to treat breast cancer using nanotechnology. Chemotherapy sends powerful medicines throughout the entire body, often making people receiving the treatment sick and weak from the side effects. But Sankar and other scientists at CAMSS envision a therapy that targets and destroys only individual cancer cells. This type of localized treatment would spare the healthy cells in the body from undergoing the same treatment as the cancerous tissue. Targeted drug delivery like this could revolutionize the way doctors treat illnesses.
Scientists at CAMSS are involved in a wide array of different research projects. Another group is studying how to engineer an “electronic nose” – a device that monitors different substances in the air. “Your nose is like a sensor,” says Sankar, “You can sense the coffee aroma, the food and the perfume smell.” By researching different combinations of polymers and nanosized particles, Sankar and his team want to build a device that can also detect in an instant the presence of dangerous substances, such as anthrax.
The diversity of people and technology behind CAMSS allows for a range of research, from biology to electronics. “Everything is under one umbrella, so scientists can dream big and move to different areas easily,” says Sankar. This “umbrella” approach is successful because nanotechnology is a multidisciplinary endeavor. Sankar is rooted in the importance of an interdisciplinary team of nanoscientists working together. For example, building a device such as the “electronic nose” draws in a diverse group of scientists from careers that usually don’t overlap, such as engineers, biologists, chemists, and computational scientists.
The integrative quality of nanotechnology makes it an enabling force in many industries. Sankar sees nanotechnology as an enabling science on two levels. It unites science on a fundamental level of atoms and molecules, but also brings people together in an interdisciplinary, yet cohesive, environment.
Nanotechnology literally pushes the boundaries of materials, biology, chemistry, physics, computational science and a variety of other scientific fields to a tinier level. The wide reach of nanotechnology across disciplines means initial developments, such as targeted drug delivery and the “electronic nose,” will improve existing technologies and industries. Further down the road, these advancements will generate new industries. Innovations, such as the targeted drug delivery, can work hand in hand with North Carolina’s well developed biotechnology infrastructure.
Sankar and his team, like many university research scientists, will license new technologies to the corporate world, thereby helping small and large businesses drive the North Carolina economy and create jobs. But for this to happen, Sankar says, the federal government, universities and industries must work together in the same interdisciplinary way as the nanoscientists developing the technology. “The challenge is getting people together. We need the university scientists, business people and the federal folks – total teamwork….if we can do that, I tell you the impact of nanotechnology will be immediate,” says Sankar.
The work at CAMSS has put NC A&T, one of the University of North Carolina’s six historically minority colleges and universities, on the national and international map in nanotechnology research. But the benefits reach outside of CAMSS because such research helps North Carolina compete in the technology marketplace and strengthens our state’s position in not only the nanotechnology industry but other technology clusters across the state, such as biotechnology and computing.
The Center for Advanced Materials and Smart Structures (CAMSS) at North Carolina A&T State University includes participants of 23 professors and seven senior scientists. CAMSS provides NC A&T a campus-wide umbrella infrastructure to facilitate and leverage its rich and diverse materials research and educational resources, including NSF Center for Research Excellence in Science and Technology (CREST), DoD Center for Nanoscience, Nanomaterials and Multifunctional Materials (CNN) for Homeland Security, NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC), NSF- Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Teams (NIRT). In addition, materials research activities overlap with the research mission of the CoE’s NASA-National Institute for Aerospace (NIA).
Check out more information about CAMSS at http://camss.ncat.edu/
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