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  NICOLE MILLER/Daily Bruin Chancellor Albert Carnesale (left) and UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang listen as Gov. Gray Davis presides over a teleconference.

By Marcelle Richards

Daily Bruin Contributor

The California NanoSystems Institute, a joint enterprise between UCLA and UC Santa Barbara, landed a victory Thursday when Gov. Gray Davis declared the project one of three winners of a $100 million state-funded research grant.

“I hope for not one, but three world class science industries,” Davis said. “It is my hope we can collaborate academia and industry, a collaboration between chancellors and investors.”

Reaping the benefits of corporate support with UCLA are UC San Diego and UC San Francisco, who also won $100 million grants each. UC Berkeley is the fourth site set in Davis’ agenda next year.

The surge of funding will ignite new innovations that will revolutionize society, Davis said.

Imagine a light bulb that lasts forever on one tenth the energy currently required or medicines that zero in on the molecular imperfections that cause disease rather than on the symptoms themselves. While these projects may seem to be mere figments of imagination, nanosystems research is in the process of making these innovations a reality in the near future.

A nanometer equates to the width of a strand of hair, split 10,000 times. The ability to work at such a small scale – the smallest thus far – has allowed scientists to develop highly specialized, and more advanced, innovations than any other preceding form of technology.

Nanosystems allow innovators to better engineer products due to the minute scale at which the innovations are manufactured.

Products have historically been developed by breaking a larger matter into smaller parts, whereas the nanosystem approach allows for atom by atom construction to create a larger whole.

Instead of restructuring an already existing product, nanosystems allow scientists to directly manipulate the building blocks of products to allow for higher precision, hence a “bottom-up” approach.

“Bottom-up or biologically-inspired fabrication is at the heart of nanotechnology,” said James Heath, UCLA chemistry professor and co-director of the institute. “This approach to manufacturing has huge ramifications and will transform all industries, from high technology to transportation to medicine.”

The concept of working at the nanometer scale drew more than 30 corporate partners who recognized the institute’s potential to significantly boost California’s economy.

Davis initially hoped for a 2-1 match at the local, federal and private sector, though the results exceeded his goals with a near 3-1 match from the private sector.

“In terms of this investment and the overall scale of the investment, it’s unprecedented,” said Hilary McLean, deputy press secretary for the governor.

Chancellor Albert Carnesale said he does not foresee any complications between UCLA and their investors concerning the preservation of academic integrity at the university.

Each corporate partnership is based on individual terms of sponsorship. Davis used the Stanford Silicon Valley project as a model for such relations in which the Palo Alto university partnered with Silicon Valley technology corporations to back research and funding.

Economically, the support from these companies create a viable market for the products and new positions in the job market, Davis said.

“The institute will draw on the interdisciplinary strengths of our two campuses, on our common vision that developments in the science and technology of nanosystems will be the basis for revolutionary advances in fields as diverse as computation, healthcare technology and multimedia art and entertainment,” said UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang.

“These advances will help fuel our economy and profoundly improve the quality of life in our society over the next decade and beyond,” he said.

The 120,000 square foot UCLA site will be in the Court of Sciences, between Boelter Hall and parking structure 9, where shared facilities will be made available for scientists and investment partners to design and conduct experiments.

“No state has embarked on the same course – our sites have been chosen, the collaborations have (already) been made,” Davis said. “We’re out ahead in this race.”

The institute expects to create new curriculum within the next year for graduate and undergraduate students, with emphasis on working from a common vocabulary to breach all disciplines together, Heath said.

“We’re trying to forge a new educational paradigm,” said Martha Krebs, the institute’s founding director. “There is a common set of tools, the underlying theme is structuring material at the nanoscale. The challenge for our institute is to create and sustain the many partnerships needed to carry out nanosystems research.”

The collaboration of scientific and corporate parties seeks to create jobs and train a new generation of scientists and engineers, while extending the educational focus to younger adults and children as well.

Hosting tours of the institute, sponsoring high school internships and displaying exhibits at local science-based museums are ways the institute hopes to build public awareness and reach out to younger generations.

“Some critics accuse me of not thinking big,” Davis said. “I think today I’ve answered that call.”