[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
NANOTECHNOLOGY: UNDERSTANDING HOW
SMALL SOLUTIONS DRIVE BIG INNOVATIONS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, MANUFACTURING, AND TRADE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JULY 29, 2014
__________
Serial No. 113-169
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce
energycommerce.house.gov
_____________
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COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
FRED UPTON, Michigan
Chairman
RALPH M. HALL, Texas HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
JOE BARTON, Texas Ranking Member
Chairman Emeritus JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan
ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky Chairman Emeritus
JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey
JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois
GREG WALDEN, Oregon ANNA G. ESHOO, California
LEE TERRY, Nebraska ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
MIKE ROGERS, Michigan GENE GREEN, Texas
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado
MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas LOIS CAPPS, California
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee MICHAEL F. DOYLE, Pennsylvania
Vice Chairman JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
PHIL GINGREY, Georgia JIM MATHESON, Utah
STEVE SCALISE, Louisiana G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina
ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio JOHN BARROW, Georgia
CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington DORIS O. MATSUI, California
GREGG HARPER, Mississippi DONNA M. CHRISTENSEN, Virgin
LEONARD LANCE, New Jersey Islands
BILL CASSIDY, Louisiana KATHY CASTOR, Florida
BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland
PETE OLSON, Texas JERRY McNERNEY, California
DAVID B. McKINLEY, West Virginia BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa
CORY GARDNER, Colorado PETER WELCH, Vermont
MIKE POMPEO, Kansas BEN RAY LUJAN, New Mexico
ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois PAUL TONKO, New York
H. MORGAN GRIFFITH, Virginia JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky
GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida
BILL JOHNSON, Missouri
BILLY LONG, Missouri
RENEE L. ELLMERS, North Carolina
Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade
LEE TERRY, Nebraska
Chairman
JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
LEONARD LANCE, New Jersey Ranking Member
Vice Chairman JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee JERRY McNERNEY, California
GREGG HARPER, Mississippi PETER WELCH, Vermont
BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky
PETE OLSON, Texas JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan
DAVE B. McKINLEY, West Virginia BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois
MIKE POMPEO, Kansas JIM MATHESON, Utah
ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois JOHN BARROW, Georgia
GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida DONNA M. CHRISTENSEN, Virgin
BILL JOHNSON, Missouri Islands
BILLY LONG, Missouri HENRY A. WAXMAN, California, ex
JOE BARTON, Texas officio
FRED UPTON, Michigan, ex officio
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hon. Lee Terry, a Representative in Congress from the State of
Nebraska, opening statement.................................... 1
Prepared statement........................................... 2
Hon. Janice D. Schakowsky, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Illinois, opening statement........................... 3
Prepared statement........................................... 5
Hon. Henry A. Waxman, a Representative in Congress from the State
of California, prepared statement.............................. 76
Witnesses
Christian Binek, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Physics and
Astronomy, University of Nebraska--Lincoln..................... 6
Prepared statement........................................... 9
Answers to submitted questions............................... 78
James M. Tour, Ph.D., T.T. and W.F. Chao Professor of Chemistry,
Professor of Computer Science, Materials Science and
Nanoengineering, Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and
Technology, Rice University.................................... 20
Prepared statement........................................... 22
Answers to submitted questions \1\
Milan Mrksich, Ph.D., Henry Wade Rogers Professor of Biomedical
Engineering, Chemistry and Cell and Molecular Biology,
Northwestern University........................................ 38
Prepared statement........................................... 40
Answers to submitted questions \2\
Jim Phillips, Chairman and CEO, Nanomech, Incorporated........... 46
Prepared statement........................................... 49
Answers to submitted questions \3\
----------
\1\ Mr. Tour did not respond to submitted questions for the
record.
\2\ Mr. Mrksich did not respond to submitted questions for the
record.
\3\ Mr. Phillips did not respond to submitted questions for the
record.
NANOTECHNOLOGY: UNDERSTANDING HOW SMALL SOLUTIONS DRIVE BIG
----------
TUESDAY, JULY 29, 2014
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade,
Committee on Energy and Commerce,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:20 a.m., in
room 2322 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Lee Terry
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Members present: Representatives Terry, Lance, Harper,
Olson, Bilirakis, Johnson, Long, Schakowsky, Sarbanes, and
Barrow.
Staff present: Leighton Brown, Press Assistant; Graham
Dufault, Policy Coordinator, Commerce, Manufacturing, and
Trade; Melissa Froelich, Counsel, Commerce, Manufacturing, and
Trade; Kirby Howard, Legislative Clerk; Paul Nagle, Chief
Counsel, Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade; Michelle Ash,
Democratic Chief Counsel; Carol Kando, Democratic Counsel; and
Will Wallace, Democratic Professional Staff Member.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. LEE TERRY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEBRASKA
Mr. Terry. Welcome all to our rock and roll hearing that is
in a series of hearings called Nation of Builders where we
explore American technology and its impact on job creation and
manufacturing. I want to thank all of you here today. Now I
feel like I am giving a speech on the National Mall. So while
they are trying to fix it, I will continue to talk and be the
guinea pig.
So just as electricity, telecommunications, and the
combustion engine fundamentally altered American economics in
the ``second industrial revolution,'' nanotechnology is poised
to drive the next surge of economic growth across all sectors.
Nanotechnology refers to the ability to manipulate matter
between 1 and 100 billionths of a meter, an endeavor that is no
small feat. Pun intended. This capability is helping solve long
intractable problems. For example, as computers get smaller,
the problem of heat generation becomes more and more severe,
and nanotech could hold the solution.
Currently, there are natural barriers to making
transistors, semiconductors, and computers any smaller because
the heat generated during use destroys the material if that
material is below a certain size. The ability to harness the
inertia of an electron could one day allow a computer to
operate on its own recycled waste heat. This capability is
called spintronics, and it would allow electronic computer
parts to break through that size barrier.
Dr. Binek, who is here from the University of Nebraska,
probably off of the Big 10 media days in Chicago, will expand
on the idea of spintronics and describe his excellent work in
this area of nanotechnology.
Advances in nanotech don't just mean we can make things
smaller. It is the ability to harness matter at the nanometer
level, which has applications across many industries. In
medicine, nanotech research has revealed that advanced nerve
regeneration and cancer detection, diagnosis, and treatment
methods could be just around the corner. In manufacturing,
nanotech research has allowed us simply to make better
materials. For example, nanocomposites can be used to decrease
the weight of the bumper on a car, while enhancing its
resistance to dents and scratches. And with three teenage boys,
that is appreciated. And wires used to transmit electricity
made from carbon nanotubes could one day eliminate much of the
electricity loss that occurs in transmission.
Today we seek to learn more about what obstacles stand in
the way of nanotech research, but also any barriers that exist
between the research and development stage and full-scale
commercialization.
There is no question that the U.S. is a leader in nanotech
researching, but as U.S. researchers make new discoveries and
the applications are revealed, I am concerned that other
countries are doing more to facilitate nanotech development
than we are. Nanotech is a true science race between the
nations, and we could be encouraging the transition from
research breakthroughs to commercial development.
I believe the U.S. should excel in this area. Historically
we have a great track record on generating startups, which is
fueled by our entrepreneurial spirit in this country. However,
for the first time since the Census Bureau started measuring
this statistic, more businesses are failing than starting in
the United States. Four hundred thousand businesses are born
annually nationwide, while 470,000 are failing. That is a
disturbing statistic.
Accordingly, I am curious as to whether, given this hostile
business climate, there are regulatory obstacles to adoption of
nanotechnology in the commercial context.
As Dr. Binek notes in his testimony, Moore's Law tells us
that the performance-to-cost ratio of computing power doubles
every 18 months or so. I believe we ought to be careful not to
slow down the progress described by ``Moore's Law'' with ``more
laws.''
Again, I thank our witnesses, and introductions will be
right after the ranking member's opening statement. Yield to
the ranking member, Jan Schakowsky, for her statement.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Terry follows:]
Prepared statement of Hon. Lee Terry
Thank you all for joining us today to discuss
nanotechnology-a catalyst that I believe could play a leading
role in the next wave of economic growth.
Just as electricity, telecommunications and the combustion
engine fundamentally altered American economics in the ``second
industrial revolution,'' nanotechnology is poised to drive the
next surge of economic growth across all sectors.
Nanotechnology refers to the ability to manipulate matter
between 1 and 100 billionths of a meter-an endeavor that is no
small feat.
This capability is helping solve long-intractable problems.
For example, as computers get smaller, the problem of heat
generation becomes more and more severe, and nanotech could
hold the solution.
Currently, there are natural barriers to making
transistors, semiconductors and computers any smaller because
the heat generated during use destroys the material if that
material is below a certain size.
The ability to harness the inertia of an electron could one
day allow a computer to operate on its own recycled waste heat.
This capability is called spintronics, and it would allow
electronic computer parts to break through that size barrier.
Dr. Binek, who is here from University of Nebraska, will
expand on the idea of spintronics and describe his excellent
work in this area of nanotechnology.
Advances in nanotech doesn't just mean we can make things
smaller-the ability to harness matter at the nanometer level
has applications across many industries.
In medicine, nanotech research has revealed that advanced
nerve regeneration and cancer detection, diagnosis and
treatment methods could be just around the corner.
In manufacturing, nanotech research has allowed us simply
to make better materials.
For example, nanocomposites can be used to decrease the
weight of the bumper on a car, while enhancing its resistance
to dents and scratches.
And wires used to transmit electricity made from carbon
nanotubes could one day eliminate much of the electricity loss
that occurs in transmission.
Today, we seek to learn more about what obstacles stand in
the way of nanotech research, but also any barriers that exist
between the research and development stage and full-scale
commercialization.
There is no question that the U.S. is a leader in nanotech
research.
But as U.S. researchers make new discoveries and new
applications are revealed, I am concerned that other countries
are doing more to facilitate nanotech development than we are.
Nanotech is a true science race between the nations, and we
should be encouraging the transition from research
breakthroughs to commercial development.
I believe the U.S. should excel in this area. Historically,
we have a great track record on generating startups, which is
fueled by our entrepreneurial spirit.
However, for the first time since the Census Bureau started
measuring this statistic, more businesses are failing than
starting in the United States-400,000 businesses are born
annually nationwide, while 470,000 are failing.
Accordingly, I am curious as to whether-given this hostile
business climate-there are regulatory obstacles to adoption of
nanotechnology in the commercial context.
As Dr. Binek notes in his testimony, Moore's Law tells us
that the performance-to-cost ratio of computing power doubles
every 18 months or so.
I believe we ought to be careful not to slow down the
progress described by ``Moore's Law'' with ``more laws.''
Again, I thank the witnesses for being here today and look
forward to their testimony.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, A
REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS
Ms. Schakowsky. Well, it looks like our macrotechnology
might have been fixed. I am not sure. Is this working, this on
here? OK.
So I want to thank you, Chairman Terry, for holding this
important hearing on the issue of nanotechnology. I look
forward to hearing from each of our accomplished witnesses
about this exciting field. I was about to ask you all for some
help here. I figured maybe the scientists know.
But I would like to take this opportunity to introduce one
of the witnesses today. Dr. Milan Mrksich is a professor at my
hometown school of Northwestern University and a leader in the
field of nanotechnology. Dr. Mrksich has focused his research
on biomedical advances that would not be possible without the
development of nanotechnology. He has been involved in research
that has made Chicago one of the premiere destinations around
the world for nanotechnology, from research and development on
Northwestern's campus to the commercialization at the nearby
Illinois Science and Technology Park, and other sites. So I
look forward to getting his valuable perspective on this.
From real-time monitoring of critical infrastructure to
water purification to more effective treatment of cancer,
nanotechnology has the potential to solve some of the world's
most important challenges. Few fields of scientific research
have as much breadth or potential.
That being said, nanotechnology's impact on public health
and our environment is not yet well understood. Certain studies
have indicated potential hazards. For example, titanium dioxide
nanoparticles, which are used in sunscreen to block UV light
can also kill microbes used to treat municipal water supplies.
That is why we need to be careful to ensure that federal
regulators responsible for public health and chemical exposure,
from EPA to FDA to CPSC, coordinate efforts to better
understand any possible toxicity of nano materials and protect
the public from harmful impacts, while enabling their
beneficial use.
The United States recognized the promise of nanotechnology
early on, and the National Nanotechnology Initiative has
benefitted from nearly $20 billion in federal investment since
2000. Other world leaders have followed suit, and more than $70
billion in global investment in nanotechnology over the same
period.
The Federal Government must continue to play a lead role in
supporting nano research and development. Last year, Congress
appropriated $1.5 billion for nanotechnology, more than 10
percent below the Administration's request, however. According
to the GAO, some other nations may already have surpassed the
U.S. in terms of public investment in nanotech, and we can be
sure that those competitors will maintain significant
investments in this promising field moving forward.
Congress, I believe, should commit to adequate support of
cutting edge research, and I hope all my colleagues will join
in working to increase National Nanotechnology Initiative
funding moving forward.
We should focus on the areas of nanotech pipeline that are
in the most need of additional support. There is a demonstrated
lack of financing for nanotech as it moves from the development
stage to the commercialization stage. I am concerned that
without consistent and significant financial backing, the
advancement of nano in this country could slow. We should work
to ensure that promising technologies, especially those that
can save and sustain human lives, have the support needed to
reach and benefit the public.
Again, I am very excited about the promise nanotechnology
holds for our country and the world. I look forward to hearing
the perspectives of our witnesses today, especially about where
we go from here.
I yield back my time.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Schakowsky follows:]
Prepared statement of Hon. Janice D. Schakowsky
Thank you, Chairman Terry, for holding today's important
hearing on the issue of nanotechnology. I look forward to
hearing from each of our accomplished witnesses about this
exciting field.
I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce one of our
witnesses, Dr. Milan Mrksich, a professor at my hometown
Northwestern University and a leader in the field of
nanotechnology. Dr. Mrksich has focused his research on
biomedical advances that would not be possible without the
development of nanotechnology. He has been involved in research
that has made Chicago one of the premier destinations around
the world for nanotechnology--from research and development on
Northwestern's campus to the commercialization at the nearby
Illinois Science and Technology Park and other sites. I look
forward to gaining from his valuable perspective.
From real-time monitoring of critical infrastructure to
water purification to more effective treatment of cancer,
nanotechnology has the potential to solve some of the world's
most important challenges. Few fields of scientific research
have as much breadth or potential.
That being said, nanotechnology's impact on public health
and our environment is not well-understood. Certain studies
have indicated potential hazards. For example, titanium dioxide
nanoparticles, which are used in sunscreen to block UV light,
can also kill microbes used to treat municipal water supplies.
That is why we need to be careful to ensure that federal
regulators responsible for public health and chemical
exposure--from the EPA to FDA and the CPSC--coordinate efforts
to better understand any possible toxicity of nanomaterials and
protect the public from harmful impacts while enabling their
beneficial use.
The United States recognized the promise of nanotechnology
early on, and the National Nanotechnology Initiative has
benefitted from nearly $20 billion in federal investment since
2000. Other world leaders have followed suit, with more than
$70 billion in total global investment in nanotechnology over
the same period.
The federal government must continue to play a lead role in
supporting nanotechnology research and development. Last year,
Congress appropriated $1.5 billion for nanotechnology, more
than 10 percent below the Administration's request. According
to the GAO, some other nations may have already surpassed the
U.S. in terms of public investment in nanotech, and we can be
sure that those competitors will maintain significant
investment in this promising field moving forward. Congress
should commit to adequate support of cutting edge research, and
I hope all of my colleagues will join in working to increase
National Nanotechnology Initiative funding moving forward.
We should focus on the areas of the nanotech pipeline that
are most in need of additional support. There is a demonstrated
lack of financing for nanotechnology as it moves from the
development stage to the commercialization stage. I am
concerned that without consistent and significant financial
backing, the advancement of nanotechnology in this country
could slow. We should work to ensure that promising
technologies--especially those that can save and sustain
lives--have the support needed to reach and benefit the public.
Again, I am excited about the promise nanotechnology holds
for our country and the world. I look forward to hearing the
perspectives of our witnesses today, especially about where we
go from here. I yield back.
Mr. Terry. Does anybody wish to make an opening statement
on the Republican side?
Mr. Olson. Mr. Chairman, introduction please, sir?
Mr. Terry. Yes, I will do that right now then. So hold on.
So our witnesses today, I want to thank all four of you for
being here. We have three universities represented that are
leaders in nanotech development and research, and I will just
take a personal note and say we allowed one outside of the Big
10.
So I want to introduce from the University of Nebraska,
Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Christian Binek. Then we
also have Milan Mrksich from, a Henry Wade Rogers Professor of
Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry and Cell and Molecular
Biology at Northwestern University. Jim Phillips, Chairman and
CEO of NanoMech, Incorporated. And now I yield for opening
statement/introduction to the gentleman from Houston, Texas.
Mr. Olson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As our guests can see by my nameplate, another Rice Owl is
in the house this morning. That owl is James Tour.
Dr. Tour and I share a common idol, the late Dr. Rick
Smalley, who won a Nobel Prize in 1996 for his work in
nanotechnology at Rice. Dr. Smalley changed my life by showing
me that I had no future, none, in nanotechnology. After my
first year of chemistry with him, that was pretty apparent. But
he changed Dr. Tour's life by recruiting him to Rice to a
leader in the Nanoscience and Technology Institute.
Dr. Tour is a perfect witness to teach this committee about
nanotechnology. He has created a thing called NanOKids,
teaching kids K-12 about nanotechnology. If he can teach a
fourth grader, man, he can surely teach members of Congress.
So with that observation, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank
you.
Mr. Terry. We can all hope.
So have any of you testified before? A couple of you, good.
For the two that haven't, this is an information hearing. It is
not like a GM hearing where you have to raise your hand and get
grilled. You are here to teach us. We want to hear what your
work has been about, and we appreciate your testimony, which
most of us have read.
So we will start from my left to right. You have 5 minutes.
There should be a clock up there if you want to look up. If you
are still speaking about the 5-minute mark, I will just kind of
lightly tap the gavel, which is the international symbol for
wrap it up.
So with that, I recognize the gentleman from the University
of Nebraska, Dr. Binek.
STATEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN BINEK, PH.D., ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR,
PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY, UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA--LINCOLN; JAMES
M. TOUR, PH.D., T.T. AND W.F. CHAO PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY,
PROFESSOR OF COMPUTER SCIENCE, MATERIALS SCIENCE AND
NANOENGINEERING, SMALLEY INSTITUTE FOR NANOSCALE SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY, RICE UNIVERSITY; MILAN MRKSICH, PH.D., HENRY WADE
ROGERS PROFESSOR OF BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, CHEMISTRY AND CELL
AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY; AND JIM
PHILLIPS, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, NANOMECH, INCORPORATED
STATEMENT OF CHRISTIAN BINEK
Mr. Binek. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me and
having this opportunity to testify, and also, thank you,
Congressmen and Congresswomen. So I am on faculty at the
University of Nebraska in Lincoln and also an active nano
scientist and I would like to give you a smooth start, let's
say, into nanoscience and nanotechnology, so maybe we can start
with the question, what is that all about?
And starting by the prefix of the word nano, which actually
comes from the Greek word nanos, and it means dwarf, so we deal
with something very small, as we all know by now. But what we
probably lack is an intuition for what it means, one billionths
of a meter, so we need actually a proper ruler, so to say, to
have comparison. And if we think of something small, we may
think, for example, of the red blood cell in our bloodstream.
But it turns out that is actually on the order of 6 microns in
diameter. So a nanometer is 10,000 times smaller than that. Or
maybe it is better to look at the molecular scale, and then we
would identify a nanometer as being 5 atoms next to each other.
So that gives us the scale, and that sets the stage for
Feynman's celebrated remark, ``There's plenty of room at the
bottom.'' And indeed, we can sort of say create and hope to
create nanostructures from the bottom up, which are extremely
small, much, much smaller, for example, than a cell, and have
function and can, for example, travel in our bloodstream and
monitor and maybe even increase health. So that was Feynman's
vision of ``swallowing the doctor'' as he called it.
From there I would like now to switch over and give us an
idea of what is the special physics that happens at the
nanoscale. What are those emerging properties at the nanoscale?
And again, it is Feynman who asked the question, what happens
if we can arrange atoms at will? And today, we are actually in
a position where we can start to do that. We can image and
manipulate atoms at will, and the answer is that if we can do
that, then we can basically design material properties at will,
because it turns out that all material properties, literally
all of them, electric, magnetic, optic, thermal, mechanic, you
name it, they all depend on the underlying atomic structure. So
if you can arrange atoms at will on the nanoscale, then we can
design within certain limits, for example, dictated by quantum
mechanical loss, we can design materials properties.
Now, that is not the end of the story. We can actually do
more. An example for such a design for nanostructures would
be--a simple but effective example would be nanoparticles
specifically tailored in magnetic properties to be applied in
magnetic hypothermia weight of potential cancer treatment.
We can do more. We can bring different materials into close
proximity. We have tools now, for example, multilayer--
techniques, and we bring materials A and B in proximity, which
traditional chemistry doesn't allow us to do. And when that
happens, new effects, new physical phenomena can emerge at the
interface, and that sends the whole is indeed more as the parts
A and B. Or as Herbert Kroemer said it already 40 years ago,
today we can say the interface itself is the device. So from
there, we can speculate and we can build a larger, more complex
structures, nanostructures, and we have the tools to do that
from the bottom up, like scanning macroscopy, or from top down.
And with all that, we can look a little bit into the future
and can see that nanotechnology will certainly transform
information technology, medical applications, energy and water
supply, smart materials, and manufacturing. And specifically in
the information technology, there is a nonlinear trend going on
now for 5 decades known as Moore's Law, where we can see that
the performance to cost ratio is actually exponentially
growing, so beyond our actual intuition. To give you an example
of the hard drives of IBM from 1956 had less than 5 megabyte
storage capacity, was two refrigerators big and weighed 2 tons.
Fifty years later, we could make hard drives with 100 gigabytes
capacity of storage and just the size of a deck of cards. That
is 100 million fold improvement in that kind of performance to
cost ratio.
So the industry is well aware that Moore's Law is not
necessarily a law of nature. It can and most likely seems right
now to stop and to come to an end, and there are processes
funded like spintronics, where I am involved, which allow us to
tackle those problems and come to new types of electronics that
we utilize the spin degree of freedom is just one example.
So I am running out of time here. I would like just to
conclude with an impact nanotechnology most likely has on
society and economy. We need to recognize that nanotechnology
is highly interdisciplinary and that there is a positive
feedback which excels the progress. We have to prepare the
workforce for this interdisciplinary and have to continue
funding from the industry side and from the government side.
With that, let me thank you for having me.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Binek follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Terry. Thank you, Dr. Binek.
Dr. Tour, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF JAMES M. TOUR
Mr. Tour. My name is James Tour, and I am the T.T. and W.F.
Chao Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Material Science and
Nanoengineering, and Professor of Computer Science at the
Richard Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology
at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
Rice's home is the home of nanotechnology where carbon 60
was discovered. I have over 500 research publications and 70
patents in nanotechnology in the fields of nanomedicine for
treatment of traumatic brain injuries, stroke, and autoimmune
diseases, nanomaterials including graphene and carbon nanotubes
for electronics, optics, and composites, and high surface area
nanomaterials for environmental capture of carbon dioxide and
for water purification. All of these technologies are licensed
to companies from my laboratory at Rice University, and all are
transitioning from basic research to deployment in the U.S. and
abroad.
It is possible for Congress to directly improve the
research enterprise in U.S. universities and to mitigate the
current brain drain of our best and brightest scientists and
engineers. This can be done without commitment of any new
spending.
Among the most ingenious pieces of legislation in my view
was the Bayh-Dole Act dealing with intellectual property
arising from Federal Government funded research. Prior to the
enactment of the Bayh-Dole Act, the U.S. Government had
accumulated 28,000 patents, but fewer than 5 percent of those
patents were commercially licensed. The key change made by
Bayh-Dole was ownership of the inventions that were made by
federal funding. Bayh-Dole permits a university, small
business, or nonprofit institution to elect to pursue ownership
of an invention in preference to the government. Government got
out of the way, and this spawned enormous entrepreneurial
endeavors and led to startup companies and jobs being birthed
throughout the country. And most interestingly, the legislation
required no new allocation of funds.
Unfortunately, there has been a dramatic loss of research
funding to U.S. universities on a per-investigator basis over
the past 5 years. The situation has become untenable. Not only
are our best and brightest international students returning to
their home countries upon graduation, taking our advanced
technology expertise with them, but our top professors are
moving abroad in order to keep their programs funded. The
trolling by foreign universities upon top U.S. faculty has
become rampant due to the declination of U.S. funding levels on
a per faculty member basis. The brain drain is not something
that we can recover. The impact of what has already been lost
will last decades.
I am not here to present to you an apocalyptic scene and
then cry for money to slow the problem. I realize the cupboards
in Washington are bare, and I offer you a no new spending
solution. I have a large research laboratory, 30 graduate
students and post-docs working busily to make new
nanotechnology discoveries and translate those into exploitable
applications. In 2008, my program was 90 percent federally
supported and 10 percent industrially supported. Then for the
first time in my 26-year career as a faculty researcher, I
could no longer survive. One federal grant after another was
unfunded. So I started to appeal to industries, showing them
how our nanotechnology research could solve technical problems
in their industries. Presently for company funds research at an
academic institution through a sponsored research agreement,
thereby guaranteeing the company access to research reports and
their setting of milestones, then the company loses the
benefits of a significant tax deduction of their allocation of
funds. In other words, their allocation to sponsored research
no longer has the same tax deductible benefits as a non-
researched based gift would have afforded them.
I am asking Congress to consider legislation that would
incentivize industry to fund academic research universities and
nonprofits by granting the companies with a total or
significant tax deduction for such university research
investments. This permits companies to take up the slack where
the Federal Government has been unable to maintain the research
enterprise. Help me and my colleagues to raise our own research
funds through partnerships with corporations. If I can explain
to industries that there will be a complete or significant tax
deduction for the sponsored research agreement, then I can sell
my research to them with the utmost attractiveness.
Let me close with this. King Solomon wrote in Proverbs
25:11, ``Like apples of gold, in settings of silver, is a
ruling rightly given.'' I pray your kind consideration for new
Bayh-Dole-like ingenious legislation to be enacted, nullifying
the dire conditions facing the U.S. research enterprise and
loss of our U.S. trained scientists and engineers. This
legislation would require no new federal allocations, and it
can become part of the holistic approach to funding of academic
science.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Tour follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Terry. Thank you. Dr. Mrksich, you are now recognized
for your 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF MILAN MRKSICH
Mr. Mrksich. There it is. The last name is not easy. My
mother-in-law struggled with it for many years.
But I am currently the Henry Wade Rogers professor at
Northwestern University with appointments in chemistry,
biomedical engineering, and cell biology. I direct a research
lab that develops nanomaterials for applications in drug
discovery and diagnostics, and medical devices. I have also
been involved in the translation of university-based science
into companies, having co-founded SAMDI Tech, 480 Biomedical, a
stent company, and Arsenal Medical. I am glad to be here to
share some of my perspectives.
As you have heard, the nanotechnology field has been
enabled by the development of methods that can create materials
with dimensions that are tiny, thousands of times smaller than
the width of a hair. And we now know that the properties of a
material that can vary strongly on their dimensions, and we
have the ability to tailor-make materials with novel and
important properties. This is a broad-based field. Unlike
traditional disciplines, it cuts across the entire science and
engineering enterprise, and has really led to paradigm shifting
technology across the board.
The National Nanotechnology Initiative recognizes
transformative potential and required federal agencies across
the board to invest in nano. And that really was important to
creating a national strength and infrastructure in this new and
exciting area.
At Northwestern, we started the International Institute for
Nanotechnology, now one of the largest such centers. This
partners with departments across campus and to date, has raised
over $600 million in research funding to develop this next
generation of technology. It has also trained hundreds of
students, many of which are now faculty members across the
globe in this area.
This investment has already led to a nascent but growing
and important industry. Again, at Northwestern, our institute
has seen about 25 companies get started, and those have raised
greater than $700 million in research support to commercialize
their products. And these success stories aren't unique, of
course, to Illinois. They are found across our Nation.
At the same time, there is a wide recognition that a lack
of predefined regulatory processes can still present challenges
to the commercialization of nanotechnologies. While regulations
for safety and environmental impact are important, they should
be effective at providing for the public's concerns and safety,
but they need to be tailored to different classes of materials
used in different sectors, and they need to be defined to
remove the risk of uncertainty that product developers face
when taking on these initiatives.
Similarly, the manufacturing methods and standards that
will be important to all companies in this space are still not
well-developed. We don't have the standard tools we can rely on
to produce in volume products based on nanomaterials, and this
is an area where a public/private partnership based perhaps on
the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation Centers could
be quite effective at providing the entire industry with
engineering practices that will enable the growth of this area.
I would like to add comments to the theme of globalization
that we have heard. The scientific and economic promise of
nanotechnology has certainly been recognized by our foreign
partners and competitors, and recent trends in those regions
point to challenges that the United States has not faced
before. First, governments in Europe and Asia continue to make
targeted investments in nanotechnology, with annual growth
rates that are in the double digits, and approaching 50 percent
in China. Second, the culture and infrastructure has changed in
Europe and Asia, and unlike 10 and 15 years ago, researchers
there are quite effective at starting new companies. And
finally, as you have heard, we are seeing the recruitment of
our best scientists to full-time and part-time positions in
other countries. And the globalization has certainly had and
will have many benefits, but it will also level the global
playing field for translating basic research into commercial
entities, and it will dilute the positive impact of
nanotechnology on our own economy.
We must act now to ensure that our early investment and the
very substantial impact it is positioned to deliver can be
realized. We must renew our support for fundamental research in
the nanosciences, as this will retain and continue to attract
the best researchers to the United States, and keep our
development pipeline full. We must remove barriers that make it
challenging to start new companies that are in the early stages
of product development. We must develop effective regulatory
standards, but also clearer standards that remove the risk of
uncertainty that many companies face in product development.
And we must make the patent system more efficient, and remove
the five or more year delay it can take to realize patent
protection and keep out would-be competitors. We must engage
our partners in industry, academia, and the government to
create a manufacturing toolbox and kit that is universal, and
again, serves the entire field.
I thank you for your time, your attention, your service to
our country, and I am happy to answer any questions that you
may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Mrksich follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Terry. Thank you.
Mr. Phillips, you are now recognized for your 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF JIM PHILLIPS
Mr. Phillips. As a manufacturer of nanotechnology it is a
great time to be alive. With the inventions of the chip and the
software storage and the internet, more will be invented in the
next 10 years than in the history of mankind, and no more place
than nanotechnology will achieve these great new inventions and
competitiveness that America is going to depend on, especially
in manufacturing, where we see manufacturing drop as part of
our GDP from about 79 percent to 17, 18 percent, giving us a
distinctive competitive disadvantage on a global basis.
I am proud to be chairman and CEO of NanoMech. We are based
in northwest Arkansas, down the street from the likes of
Walmart, Tyson headquarters, and we have, over the last year,
won a portfolio of award-winning inventions and commercial
products, including innovations in machining and advanced
manufacturing, lubrication and energy, biomedical implant
coatings, and very strategic military applications. We feel we
are poised for dramatic expansion of our manufacturing
operations. I am proud to say we are in the process right now
of adding an additional 25,000 square feet to our existing
factory. We have bought up the entire technology park that we
live in with the belief that we will be needing that kind of
manufacturing capacity to keep up with our demand.
Today, the United States is locked in a moon race, in an
absolute moon race with other major countries trying to take
the lead in materials science and bio nanoscale engineering
research, development, commercialization in what is sure to be
the next industrial revolution of progress. While these
competitive countries lost out to an extent to the U.S. in the
information technology revolution, they are determined to put
enormous amounts of public and private capital to work to win
this more important race. Given the monopolistic efforts of
China alone to control all of the world's dwindling resources.
Today they control about 85 percent, the U.S. is now at great
risk of not having the materials and the rare earth metals that
are core to the most important manufactured goods that are
essential to our daily lives. Nanoscale engineering is our
greatest hope in providing a way to do more with less and
amazing and sustainable ways to keep America secure, and the
world leader in commerce, technology, and especially defense.
Speaking of defense, it is clear by now that the country with
the best UAVs wins. And no weaponization area more than UAVs
will benefit from the tremendous advantages of nanoengineering
and manufacturing. This, of course, is not to mention the huge
gains already realized in defense and national security and
weapons systems deploying quantum leaps in super-advanced
nanoengineered coatings, lubricants, fuels, energetics, faster
processors, and battlefield gear, all due to nanotechnology.
Over the past 2 years, I have had the opportunity to
participate in the Council on Competitiveness executive
committee, as well as its U.S. Manufacturing Competitiveness
Initiative, and the Office of the Comptroller General's Study
on Nanotechnology. I take this opportunity to offer my
perspective as an entrepreneur and a nano-manufacturer.
Many U.S. States and localities do too little to attract
manufacturing facilities, imposing complicated time-consuming
procedures on top of federal rules to site and build production
facilities. The permitting process for a manufacturing facility
in the United States might take months, if not years, where in
some countries the time required is merely a few weeks or less.
We are certainly offered by China and Russia it seems like on a
quarterly basis to move our entire operation there. Never will
do it. Former ex-pilot in the Air Force and definitely a
patriot, and we just won't do those kinds of things. We don't
even take their money, even though they offer it to us all the
time. Consider, for example, NanoMech, though, as our very safe
product platforms. I don't know of any nanotechnology lawsuits
for liability in the 30-year history of nanotechnology to date.
We utilize convergent assembly so that we can nanoengineer
tremendous improvements in many products and through this
process, what we ship, even though nanoengineered and
nanomanufactured, is no longer at nanoscale, but vastly
superior to conventionally manufactured products. We are
developing cutting edge technology that enables dramatically
more efficient industrial processes, and therefore can save
billions of dollars across several industries, while
dramatically increasing performance.
At the nanoscale, we and other manufacturers can reduce or
eliminate harsh chemicals and materials and replace them with
more environmentally sound and sustainable components. We do
that every day. One of our products is called nGlide. This is a
new super additive for the energy space. For that reason, we
have opened up in Texas and are working with some of the
largest companies in the energy manufacturing space. We add
just a small amount of lubricant, and we reduce the coefficient
of friction down to literally zero. Hardly any wear for that
product going forward. We work with the largest companies
around the United States in this. We also work with racing
teams where this has all been demonstrated. Think of it, no
wear, yet higher performance. The ability to increase miles per
gallon, miles per hour, reduce heat, reduce wear.
One of the other products we have is called TuffTek. This
is where we spray a nano spray in a very safe facility with
cubic boron nitride, the hardest substance known to man. When
we do that, it creates a very hard coating surface on cutting
tools. When we do that, cutting tools can last as much as 10
times longer. Of course, cutting tools are at the core of
everything that is manufactured. This year, we were awarded the
R&D100, the Edison, and the Tibbetts Award for that, the
Tibbetts Award coming through the EPA.
Talent is perhaps the most important driver for
manufacturing competitiveness, especially nanotechnology. The
United States needs highly skilled workers to realize the
productivity gains essential to remain globally competitive in
the digital and nano age. Yet current and anticipated human
capital deficiencies exist across the board. Not only are
current openings for highly skilled workers challenging,
manufacturing workers are retiring at a much higher rate than
they are being replaced. For that reason, we ask this committee
to consider taking a real hard look at the area of visas. Visas
have turned out to be a huge problem for us as we try to man
and staff our company with the very best and brightest.
At this point in time, it looks like time is up so I will
defer to questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Phillips follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Terry. Thank you.
Mr. Phillips. Thank you.
Mr. Terry. So all witnesses have testified. This is our
opportunity to begin our questions for you, and so as chairman,
I get to start, and I will start with Dr. Binek.
Now in your testimony, Doctor, you mentioned the
interdisciplinary field. Could you expand on how you and the
University of Nebraska are engaged in interdisciplinary
practice, and who is part of that and how it enhances the
ability to advance nanotechnologies?
Mr. Binek. Yes, thank you, chairman, for that question.
Let me first start locally, at the University of Nebraska,
we have Nebraska Center for Materials and Nanoscience, which is
an interdisciplinary center where we work together as
physicists, chemists, and engineers on nanotechnological
problems that includes building where all the tools and for
electro-microscopy to x-ray machines to lithography, all housed
in our actually quite new Walt A. Keaton building. And in
addition, we are fortunate to have an NSF-funded MRSEC,
Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, and in the
same spirit interdisciplinary, we have physicists, we have
chemists, and engineers all coming together and working on
nanotechnological problems.
I am also involved in two centers. One center is located
also at the University of Nebraska, led by us. It is the Center
for Nanophotonic Devices. It is an interdisciplinary research
between six universities. And another center I am involved in
is the C-Spin Center, where 18 universities nationwide----
Mr. Terry. That is C-Spin, and what is that?
Mr. Binek. It is a lengthy acronym for a center where we,
again, look for spintronic solutions, mainly to sort of say the
barrier which is anticipated by extrapolations of scaling. It
is known in the semiconductor industry it is known that if you
continue the scaling, making things just smaller and smaller,
we will hit a barrier latest by 2020, which is determined by
many reasons and also fundamental reasons, like quantum
tunneling. We are asked to look for solutions to solve those
heat problems you mentioned in your introduction, and
spintronics is one of those potential solutions where you use
the spin degree of freedom and we can have new functions in our
devices, not only processing, but also processing and memory in
one device. The spin or the collective phenomenon of magnetism
is ideal for non-volatile memory, and we can switch those state
variables also by electric means, avoiding electric currents,
and that seems to be one way in the future to solve that
problem.
Mr. Terry. And as I understand, there are industries that
are also involved, and so how do they participate? Talent,
money, whatever.
Mr. Binek. They participate on various levels, mainly
money, and that is a good thing. So for example, the C-Spin
center, if I am not mistaken, we talk about a volume of $31
million of funding for a 6-year period. It is mainly by the
Semiconductor Research Corporation, which is a consortium of
who is who in the semiconductor industry from IBM, Intel,
Global Foundries, Micron, you name it. And in addition, with
the contribution.
Mr. Terry. Thank you.
Mr. Phillips?
Mr. Phillips. Yes, sir.
Mr. Terry. You take that nanotechnology and then apply it
in manufacturing. I am interested about how you make that shift
and the capital that is necessary to get that done. How do you
do it?
Mr. Phillips. Well, it is pretty conventional, the way
American businesses always run. You have got to raise capital
to build anything, whether it is a space shuttle or a Dairy
Queen. You have to be able to capitalize it, and sometimes it
comes from purely private capital, in my case, my capital as
well. And then sometimes you are also able to get grants, both
on a state and federal level, and those are very important. So
we have received over time grants from National Science
Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, Department of Energy,
and so forth. Although very minimal compared to the totality of
capital we have raised.
When you build a company like this, the first thing you
have to do is have the incredible ideation and invention, the
concept and everything, and then you have to turn that into
something that is manufacturable. You have to be able to create
assembly lines that have quality control with repeatability,
scalability, so that it prices out whatever it is you are
manufacturing, that it becomes a must-have that people can
afford. So it is basic business practices. In this technology
which is very, very new, there are more regulatory probably
than conventional. We know in the U.S., we appreciate the
regulatory. We believe in safety and the controls that are in
place, albeit we have to compete against countries that
perhaps--have 5 percent total regulatory costs against our 30
to 35 percent regulatory cost. So we have to build in an effort
to accommodate that.
Mr. Terry. Thank you, and my time is expired.
I recognize the ranking member, Jan Schakowsky, for your 5
minutes.
Ms. Schakowsky. Instructor Tour, I appreciate all of the
commercialization, especially that and the problems that you
face because companies seem, you are saying would want these
tax breaks. But I want to just make the very clear point that
you say without any new federal dollars. Not true. It is a
decision on whether there is direct federal subsidies and
grants, or we give tax breaks. There is a reason that we talk
about tax breaks as tax expenditures, because clearly, that is
a cost to the Federal Government as well, any tax dollars that
would be lost because we would, and so there is a lot of other
considerations. Is it better for the Federal Government to make
some of the decisions about where the money goes? Do we just
leave it to the private sector? And I know others have
mentioned public/private partnerships as another way to go.
So I just wanted to make the point that this is not a
freebie for the Federal Government when we say that we do it
through tax breaks that we would give to corporations. Not
ruling that out, but it is a tradeoff that we have to discuss.
I wanted to ask Dr.----
Mr. Tour. May I comment on that?
Ms. Schakowsky. Yes, of course.
Mr. Tour. I think that I said no new spending and no new
allocations, because I well appreciate what you are saying,
Congresswoman. It is a reality that when you don't have taxes,
you don't have money coming in. So that is why I used the words
that no new spending, no new allocations.
But the other thing that I hope that I underscored is that
it is really a dire situation in the federal dollars that are
able to come in and by doing this, somehow we are spreading the
load out a little bit to incentivize industry coming in.
Ms. Schakowsky. I am all for that and it is not a
criticism. I just wanted to make sure that we are clear that
one way or another, it is money from the Federal Government.
I just have a suggestion, Dr. Mrksich. If you added another
vowel between the M and the R, if you added an E, everyone
could pronounce your name.
Mr. Mrksich. You should see my mailbox. I have about 10
good versions of improvements on my name.
Ms. Schakowsky. Just an idea. Four vowels, four consonants
in a row makes it hard. OK. I don't want to take up too much of
my time.
I know that you primarily focus on nanomaterials for
biological and medical applications, and I am wondering if you
could provide a little more detail on the research that you are
doing. What kind of advances might happen over the next 5 to 10
years due to your research?
Mr. Mrksich. I would be happy to. In the area of
therapeutics, one kind of a very special properties that
nanomaterials give us is the ability to target tissues more
selectively. So a lot of drugs that are intended to act in the
brain, whether it is for Alzheimer's Disease, those drugs are
being developed, Parkinson's and others, those drugs have a
difficult time crossing the blood brain barrier. So they can be
taken, they are in the system, but they don't get to the site
where they can act and improve health.
We have now found that nanoparticles, because of their
small sizes, but larger than molecules so they avoid some of
the systems that molecules get tied up in, are much more
effective at crossing that barrier. So this could be a platform
to deliver medicines to the site where they can act so that
when we have a medication, a pharmaceutical that is not useful
because it doesn't get to the site, one can literally have to
drill through the skull and put a device in the brain, or one
might be able to use nanoparticle carriers to get them there.
We still haven't worked through all of the safety issues and
what the dosing should be, what the properties of those
particles--but that is one example where nano would take
existing trends and just put them at a different--on a
different plane.
Ms. Schakowsky. I was going to ask you about the support
gap, but I think we have really heard from everybody that one
way or another, the United States needs to figure out how we
support this industry, and I just want to make sure that that
has absolutely been heard.
In your testimony, Dr. Mrksich, you mentioned the multi-
agency structure of the National Nanotechnology Institute, but
I don't know if you know that Congress has not reauthorized
that or provided an updated vision for it since 2003. I am
wondering if there are any particular changes you think need to
be made in order for it to get new life.
Mr. Mrksich. Absolutely. The NNI, started in 2000, has
absolutely been a success in terms of creating an
infrastructure in the U.S., making the U.S. the global leader
in innovating, and having the opportunities to translate into
commercial entities. The NNI never had its own money. It
required the agencies to redirect a fraction of their budgets
to nano-related research. I think we are at the point where we
have got this incredible infrastructure and we are now
beginning, just in the last 3, 4, 5 years seeing a reverse
brain drain. Our best people leaving and other folks who would
have come to the United States staying. And this is a direct
reflection of the imbalance of research money and
infrastructure that is available.
So there is no question in my mind that in renewing, it is
really reinventing the NNI to put real money behind it and to
ensure that our best people have the tools, have the funding to
continue on this incredible first 15-year history we have
created.
Ms. Schakowsky. So for me, lesson learned. Private and
public money is really needed to keep us in the forefront.
Thank you.
Mr. Terry. Recognize, I will not recognize the gentleman
from Kentucky. Mr. Olson, you are recognized.
Mr. Olson. I thank the chair, and my questions, first off,
will be for Dr. Tour.
Doctor, you mentioned in your testimony you have 30 grad
students and undergrads, doctors, and post grads working for
you at Rice. You mentioned concern about the brain drain,
because many of these people come from overseas. How many
people of that 30 are not from here in America? Half, two-
thirds?
Mr. Tour. Of that 30, probably 25 are not Americans.
Mr. Olson. How many people find a way to stay here after
they graduate? You give them that great diploma, that
sheepskin?
Mr. Tour. I would say that half of them will stay. More
would stay if they could. The very best of the international
students are returning to their home countries where they can
get faculty positions. There are no opportunities for them
here. There are very few faculty positions opening up in the
United States because of the funding situation, and that
funding situation being a lack of money that is coming in in
federal grants, and mechanisms for that. So they are getting
very attractive offers from their home countries, or from
countries like Singapore, and also, interestingly enough, the
U.K. and Europe because of the large amounts of money in the
area, specifically in carbon nanotechnology graphene. So many
of them are leaving that would have liked to have stayed.
Mr. Olson. And Doctor, you said in your testimony that
corporations get a deduction if they fund research through your
institute. Any example of a corporation that has lost their
deduction, that has not invested in your institute because they
lost a tax credit, tax, whatever you want to say about the tax
preference. Any example of somebody who said listen, Doctor, I
want to help you out but I just can't do it. I have to have
that----
Mr. Tour. Oh, there are companies that have said that they
just can't swing this, but they are the companies that have
come forward are doing it anyway, but it is very hard to get
companies to step forward, and if I can use this as a
leveraging point, it actually works out quite well for both of
us. And as to the amount of deduction that they presently get,
it is very hard even to figure that out. I am not a tax person
and I tried to get that data even to bring it in here to speak
to these companies how much they say definitely that it would
help if we had had that tax deduction. But they didn't know how
much they are really allowed to deduct. And different companies
had different views on this in trying to understand the tax law
even.
Mr. Olson. It sounds like it does hurt for sure. I mean,
these guys sort of sit back and say hum, Dr. Tour, you are
doing great work, but I have got shareholders I got to take
care of, a legal obligation to do that, so I may not invest in
your great research because of our tax policies.
Mr. Tour. Absolutely, and there are companies that may even
be in your district that have said that. I am not exactly sure
where the border of your district is.
Mr. Olson. It changes dramatically. But sir, you and I live
in the energy capital of the world, and so I am thrilled about
what is happening in the energy sector with nanotechnologies.
On your Web site, it mentions oil and gas, enhanced
recovery operations, those type of things. Elaborate on what is
going on, how you are getting help from industries around
there, and what we should be excited about.
Mr. Tour. So we have a project that is funded in total by
Apache Corporation where we have been able to capture
CO2 coming out of a natural gas well, so natural gas
is a very clean sort of carbon fuel, 30 percent lower
CO2 emissions than running a car on gasoline. But
coming out with natural gas is CO2. That
CO2 is generally just vented to the air. We have
figured out how to trap it and how to send it back down whole.
Apache is working on the conversion of that to industrial scale
for the deployment. We are working on nano reporters, which
these are funded by seven different oil companies in a
consortium called the Advanced Energy Consortium, where we
developed sensors that can go down hole and they can travel
through the sub-three nanometer ports, the sub-three nanometers
ports down hole, and then bring up information as to how much
oil is down there. And also nanoparticles for enhanced oil
recovery, when they see that oil to grab that oil and bring it
back up, and then self separate. So those are a few examples
from the oil industry.
Mr. Olson. Finally, healthcare, medical. As you know, right
across from Rice University is the Texas Medical Center, the
largest research institution in America for healthcare
research. You mentioned--I am sorry, your Web site mentioned
carbon nanovectors involved in this. What is so exciting about
carbon nanovectors?
Mr. Tour. OK, so we can take these carbon particles now,
and all of this has been licensed to a company. They bought the
whole suite of patents, licensed the whole suite of patents.
This is in collaboration with Baylor College of Medicine across
the street, UT Health Science Center, M.D. Anderson Cancer
Center, and Methodist Hospital and joint patents between us
all. These carbon particles, they can trap something called
super oxide. Super oxide, if someone gets a traumatic brain
injury, traumatic brain injury is the number one disabler of
young adults and super oxide causes great degradation to the
brain in the first several hours after. It is exactly the same
as the biggest disabler in older adults, which is stroke. It is
a lack of oxygen. There has been a blockage. There is a lack of
oxygen. When that blockage is removed and oxygen comes in,
super oxide forms which degrades the brain. We inject the
nanoparticles just before we clear the blockage, and then what
happens is this sequesters the super oxide and makes it
unreactive towards the brain, and so you get far less brain
degradation.
Mr. Olson. I am out of time. Thank you.
Mr. Terry. I recognize Mr. Johnson. Bill, you are
recognized.
Mr. Johnson. Mr. Chairman, I pass. Thank you.
Mr. Terry. OK, then the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Long,
you are recognized for your 5 minutes.
Mr. Long. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Phillips, as
someone who started a firm from the bottom, can you give more
insight into the hurdles that startups deal with with
nanotechnology?
Mr. Phillips. Thank you, sir, I would be glad to. We, too,
as a company and as a scientific nanotechnology company, the
majority of our scientists are on visas or trying to get visas,
to the tune of about 80 percent of those, and trying to
maintain them in the United States is one of our most difficult
problems. I mean, basically the visa program in the United
States is so out of date, and so difficult that it is like we
are telling our Einsteins and our Wernher von Brauns to get the
heck out of the United States, go home. It is exactly like
that. We face that issue very day. A number of our scientists
have become American citizens while working at NanoMech. I am
proud to say they have gone down to Judge Parker's courtroom
down in Ft. Smith, Arkansas, raised their hand, and some of the
greatest scientists ever come out of the Ukraine, India, China,
have become American citizens through working at NanoMech on
our nanotechnology. One of the scientists that came out of
China ran the entire water management program for China when he
was 29. He is now a proud American citizen. But every day it is
harder and harder with this visa program. We have one our top
researchers right now that is working on the most advanced
systems for the Department of Defense in the way of creating
the best body armor that ever has existed, totally fireproof,
totally waterproof, totally antimicrobial, antibacterial. We
basically finished and we have been trying for 2 years to get
his wife a visa to join him here in the United States, although
he was educated here in the United States, received his Ph.D.
here in the United States. That is kind of an everyday problem
for us in terms of visa programs.
Other things in nanotechnology that are difficult, I am not
a state-run company. I don't want to be a state-run company,
but I have to compete against state-run companies. In China
today they have the Nanopolis. The Nanopolis is a multi-,
multi-, multi-billion dollar project to create commercialized
nanotechnology. They invite us over there every day. I have
been invited to be their keynote speaker in China this year for
the third year in a row, and for the third year in a row, I
will turn it down. But they are really outspending us at this
point in time in a big way, along with Russia. Russia has a $10
billion fund that they are operating in the United States
called RusNano. Dmitri, who is based out in Silicon Valley, is
a Russian who has been trying to either invest in us or in
other companies, and have successfully invested in many
nanotechnology companies in the United States, as well as
venture capital companies in an effort to gain access, or if
not even control, of our nanotechnology that has been produced
through billions of dollars worth of research through National
Science Foundation, NIH, down through our incredible university
system. So we have to capitalize this company in order to build
very fast. I think we are the fastest growing nanomanufacturing
company in the United States to do things like we do to create
new types of greases and lubes. That may not sound like a very
important thing, it may sound kind of boring, but the world
runs on machines. Machines run on lubricants. Without it, they
don't run as well. So we are able to create lubricants that
make machines basically last a lot longer. For instance, we
believe if we were lubricating the Navy ships, I have had
conversations with the Secretary of the Navy on this; we could
extend the life of our Navy fleet immediately 10 to 20 years
without any other expenditures, and many things like that. So
getting access to government-type contracts is very tough for
smaller companies. Getting access to competitive capital on a
national and global scale through public/private partnerships
is becoming harder and harder. Overcoming this thing called the
valley of death where you go to full-scale scaling companies
like ours and we operate on patents that we have licensed from
leading American universities. So just in the area of
competitiveness, we have the willpower at NanoMech to grow this
company, to provide incredible new technologies like very
lightweight body armor that is much, much safer than what is
out there today, new types of weapons that have never even been
dreamed of that can be reached through nanotechnology----
Mr. Long. Let me interrupt you there. I know nanotechnology
is extremely exciting and there are a lot of tremendous
benefits from it. I know that in my home State of Missouri that
Brewer Science has partnered with Missouri State University in
my hometown and have a very, very good partnership with the
development of nanotechnologies, so I think that some of these
public/private partnerships are starting to take root, and I
hope to see them expand, so good luck to you on your ventures.
Mr. Binek, can you tell me is Nebraska in the SEC?
Mr. Terry. That is a cheap shot.
Mr. Long. Well, I know they are not but I just love hearing
it. I yield back.
Mr. Terry. We are united in being former members of the Big
12 with you.
Recognize the gentleman from the SEC, Mr. Bilirakis.
Mr. Bilirakis. Absolutely, best team in the SEC, University
of Florida Gators. Go Gators.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing on a
growing sector of America's innovation economy.
Nanotechnology is a sector that holds exciting prospects
for the United States with its continued position at the
forefront of technological advancement and economic growth.
Nanotechnology is the perfect demonstration of how the private
marketplace continues to innovate to solve economic and
societal problems.
For example, in my district, Dais Analytic, which was named
to the Forbes magazine's top energy projects to watch in 2012,
has developed technologies and programs to clean dirty air and
dirty water. Because nanotechnology is still a relatively new
phenomenon, it is important that the Federal Government not
stifle innovation and growth with burdensome and unnecessary
regulations and red tape.
Here is my question. I currently serve as the co-chair of
the Congressional Technology Transfer Caucus, and I am
interested in how we economically capitalize upon the
investments made in technology research. I understand that it
may be difficult to transition from research to licensing to
commercial development. Can you walk us through, and this is
for the panel, can you walk us through the challenges that are
faced in the stages of development, from patenting new research
and technology to licensing it to companies to commercializing
it, please? Whoever would like to start.
Mr. Mrksich. I can begin. I have done this a number of
times, and having advances in my university lab lead to
something interesting. Within the universities, we disclose
that, apply for patents, and at the same time start to form a
small company. That is sometimes done by raising seed or angle
money. Sometimes it is done by going straight to venture
capitalists, if that is the scale of the investment required.
Then from there it gets a start, and runs on the treadmill and
hits milestones and raise more capital.
One comment I want to make about nano, though, this is a
new area. If you look at biotechnology, there are many repeat
entrepreneurs that really are quite effective at getting new
technologies out. There are venture capital firms and angels
who specialize in that space, and so they are very
sophisticated in recognizing opportunities and aggressively
pursuing them.
Ten years ago, there were just a handful of nanotechnology
companies that got started. We didn't have the capital
infrastructure, the sophisticated investors that made it and
the repeat entrepreneurs that made it more straightforward to
get started. So as I look back, I think, and in my case, this
is true as well, the SBIR program has oftentimes been the
stepping stone to get IEP out of the university into a company
where you can start working on a prototype and de-risk the
technology. And I think in this young field still, where many
of the founders of new companies are first-time founders, they
are not familiar with the process and there are many barriers
to getting going. Making it more straightforward to direct SBIR
funds towards those folks, I would even think about a policy
that said if you have a research grant from the NSF or the NIH
or the DOE and a nanospace, and you apply for a patent, that
you have a streamlined access to an SBIR to get that out of the
university and put it into the commercial sector where it can
get going. Because I think there are a lot of things that are
left on the floor because, again, this young area with first-
time entrepreneurs don't have a straightforward time getting
something started.
I will let the others add other perspectives.
Mr. Bilirakis. Yes, please. Anyone else, please?
Mr. Tour. I have gone through this many times. I agree with
Milan and I have known Milan for a long time, is that what I am
finding now is that it is international companies and entities
and investors that are coming and wanting to buy up the
technology.
Just recently, one of our patents was licensed to a Chinese
company for the development of super capacitors, and they are
going to take this on and make batteries for electric vehicles
this way. Three of our technologies are currently being
licensed by the Israelis to start companies in three different
areas, based on the technology that was developed in our
laboratory. There was a company that was going to start and the
tax advisor said don't start it in the United States, start it
in Singapore. And that was purely from a tax consideration
standpoint.
So at no other time in my career in the last year or two I
am seeing this coming of foreign entities and buying up U.S.
technologies, and so the question then becomes why aren't the
U.S. entrepreneurs stepping forward as aggressively as the
international entities, and I am not sure that I have answer to
that for you, and that is something that there is probably, you
in this room have thought about this more than I have. But this
is a trend that I am noticing that the biggest and most
aggressive buyers of the technology now, in my experience in
the last several years, are not U.S. entities anymore.
Mr. Terry. Thank you.
Recognize the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Johnson.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I did want to come
back and kind of take off on what, Dr. Tour, you were just
talking about. What do you think we need to do to regain U.S.
competitiveness for human talent and corporate investment as
compared to what some of those other countries that are doing
that are state-sponsored, subsidized countries like China and
others?
Mr. Tour. Right. So even before coming here, I talked to
this Israeli group that is licensing three of our technologies
to certain companies. And I said show me the tax structure of
what it would cost me to start up a company in Israel. And they
sent me the links to all of that data, and the tax structure is
a lot more friendly towards small companies, especially if you
are going to build your manufacturing entity outside of Tel
Aviv, moving it. So I am talking about tax rates that are on
the order of about 7 percent.
So you look at numbers like this, and I am cognizant of the
fact that the U.S. government runs on taxes, but I have started
several small companies myself and I will never start another
one again. It is a very difficult and arduous task, and so now
I just go into the licensing and license it out to others. But
the tax structure is quite aggressive here, and again, I am
deferring to what the Congresswoman said, and I acknowledge
that. I am just saying that when you look at the tax structure,
it is very different.
My testimony here is saying that without a proper mechanism
for funding, many of these very smart people that we have are
now leaving. The U.K. has come with a graphene and carbon
program that is enormous. The European Union, that is enormous
and funding at a very large scale. And they are trolling U.S.
faculty. I had two offers, two offers in the last year from the
U.K. to move my program there. My program that was 90 percent
federally funded, 10 percent industrially supported in 2008 is
now 80 percent industrially supported and 20 percent federally
supported. Same amount of money. I have been able to make that
transition, so my testimony is help me to make that transition.
If the Federal Government can't step up, what can you do in the
meantime to allow me to bring more money into my laboratory and
my colleagues into their laboratories to maintain their
programs here, rather than just having us move abroad. Because
these folks are industrious folks and they are going to find
out how to get their program continued. And if that means
moving overseas, they will do it.
Mr. Johnson. So is it safe to say, then, that tax reform is
critically important to retaining nanotechnology expertise in
America and making us competitive?
Mr. Tour. I absolutely think so, sir, and I know that is
not the direct privy of this committee, but I know that you
have influence in that.
Mr. Johnson. Dr. Binek, how can research consortia such as
the Semiconductor Research Corporation be encouraged in the
U.S.? Have you worked with other similar organizations or know
of similar organizations working with universities to support
nanotechnology research?
Mr. Binek. In the case of the Semiconductor Research
Corporation, their motivation is basically driven by,I mean,
they look at the scaling issue and they know if we don't do
something drastically soon, there will be a major problem
because who wants a next generation cell phone which just
changes color, right, but there is no progress anymore. So this
kind of driving force can, I think, be very strong, but it can
probably also be very strong, although I have less experience
outside the semiconductor industry. For other industries,
however, my concern here is that it is mainly short-driven to
some extent they have to see the abyss in front by doing their
own extrapolations, seeing that scaling 2020 will, and then
they say OK, we better do something, and now it is already a
little late. And I think we should find ways to do something in
advance.
Mr. Johnson. OK. In your testimony, you discuss U.S.
dependence on rare earth permanent magnets, which are
predominantly mined in China. So why are these magnets
important to the U.S. economy and what are the benefits of
finding alternatives?
Mr. Binek. So you find them everywhere, from your cell
phone in the modern lithium ion batteries and I was
specifically referring to the important use of them in
permanent magnets. There are high energy permanent magnets
which enable this extremely lightweight electrical engines,
which allow for this unmanned aerial vehicles, for example, or
headphones even. All kinds of applications, wind turbines. For
example, a 2 megawatt wind turbine has 800 pounds of rare earth
minerals in it, so they are very important and the thing about
rare earth, as the name may suggest, they are not that rare.
You cannot just mine them as other metals like gold or copper.
They are not really concentrating that much, so you have to
operate with large volumes and then extract small amounts of
them. And that is a very costly enterprise, and also it comes
with a huge burden on the environment. I mean, there are
stories about these toxic lakes in China which are a big
problem.
So finding alternatives to rare earth is certainly an
important thing, and nanotechnology, again, can help here. For
example, in the field of permanent magnets we do that also at
the University of Nebraska. We use nanostructuring of
materials, bringing hard and soft materials into proximity and
then get those properties without rare earth, just really
metals, for example.
Mr. Terry. Thank you.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Terry. I recognize the gentleman from Mississippi.
Mr. Harper. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank each of you
for being here and for your insight. It is certainly amazing
some of the progress that is being made and the excitement for
the future of what we can do if we do this properly.
Dr. Binek, if I may ask a follow-up on Mr. Johnson's
question, specifically about the rare earth materials. How far
away are we from developing alternatives at a commercially
viable high volume manufacturing process?
Mr. Binek. I think we are still quite a step away to
replace them. Certainly we will not replace them with a switch
everywhere. There are different field and different needs
applications where we can hope to find replacements soon, but I
am very certain as far as I can predict that they will still
play an important role in the foreseeable future in many, many
applications.
Mr. Harper. Thank you very much.
Mr. Binek. I may want to mention that there are--as a
mining operation also again reopened in the United States, but
it comes with its own problems.
Mr. Harper. OK, and where is that?
Mr. Binek. To be honest, I need to pass on that.
Mr. Harper. OK, that is fine. Thank you very much.
Mr. Phillips, if I could ask you a few follow-up questions.
In your testimony, you discuss the U.S. permitting process for
manufacturing facilities. Why is the time table for approval
longer in the United States than other countries?
Mr. Phillips. Well, you could basically say the United
States perhaps is more advanced in that area in terms of
guarding safety and regulations and things like that, and to a
great extent, a lot of those regulations are necessary for a
good, safe country. But----
Mr. Harper. OK, and how have other countries----
Mr. Phillips. I am up against countries that don't even
know what OSHA is. They have no OSHA. They have no requirements
for insurance. They have no permits, typically, and so all I do
is try to make a comparison as to trying to compete against
those companies and countries like that that are state-run
companies. It makes it more difficult for a company like us.
Albeit, we work very closely with our municipalities, our state
governments, and so forth to expedite those situations to
reduce the amount of paperwork, typically, that comes with it.
A lot of it is incredibly redundant paperwork, committees upon
committees upon committees that you have to deal with that I
would say could be incredibly streamlined. Having founded a
company in Mississippi, co-founded a company called Skytel in
Jackson, Mississippi that became instant messaging and ushered
that in on a worldwide basis. I can remember back to the days
in the '90s on how easy it was to do things like that. Of
course, that was in the digital space, as we moved from analog
to digital and totally transformed the way business is done. I
believe that the transformation that is taking place in moving
from micron technology in a manufacturing scale to now
nanoscale will dwarf all the benefits we saw in the digital
world, moving from analog to digital. Unfortunately, as the
testimony shows today, in Europe and Asia and so forth, they
are taking nanotechnology tremendously more serious than the
U.S. government is in terms of advancing it with incredible
speed, with developing either public/private partnerships or
outright gifts to corporations to make them competitive. We
have seen a couple of those in the U.S. A lot of criticism
about Solyndra. Solyndra received $500 million in funding and
then went bankrupt, but in China, there were four competitors
to Solyndra that received $5 billion each to compete and
dropped the price on a worldwide basis and took the worldwide
lead in solar. And now the remains of Solyndra are owned by
China, as is A123, our leading battery company, that received
$500 million in funding in the U.S., but compared to China it
was dwarfed.
So although I'm not, again, wanting to be a state-run
company or anything like that. We have to look at the entire
business model on a global basis, not on a U.S. basis, in order
to compete going forward. It is something we have to get a
handle on, because if we don't make things, we really cease to
be a country.
Mr. Harper. So what you are saying is if there is a way to
fast track some of this process, that is a great benefit to
you. And you mentioned countries that maybe are not doing it
right. Are there some countries that are, indeed, doing it well
on nanotechnology R&D?
Mr. Phillips. Well, you look to Germany and Japan and so
forth and the amount of public/private partnerships that you
see there are fantastic in terms of the speed, Sweden and
others. And this is not to over-criticize my country which I
love dearly and represent it, as in the military days. I think
we are definitely trying a lot of things, but we are stymied to
a certain extent in patents right now. The cost of a U.S.
patent compared to overseas many times is prohibitive and in
the area of nanotechnology, in order to protect gigantic
investments it takes to enter into a manufacturing, as opposed
to digital space, that cost is very high. I just hope 100 years
from now when America looks back, we don't basically say well,
we are the country that did Facebook, compared to the country
that came up with new ways to manufacture that totally created
new cures, whether it was for cancer or what have you, and
nanotechnology and maintained a very competitive weaponization
system, as weapons became smaller and easier to perhaps control
those weapons in strategic and tactical applications.
Mr. Harper. Thank you very much, Mr. Phillips. I yield
back.
Mr. Terry. Thank you, and the gentleman from New Jersey is
recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Lance. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Phillips, in your testimony you referred to various
policies that may be hampering business investment in
nanotechnology, including the R&D tax credit. In 16 countries
with a higher R&D credit than the U.S.--and I am sorry that
that is the case--I believe that their corporate tax rate is
different from the United States, and our corporate tax rate is
among the highest, perhaps the highest in the industrialized
world. Could you comment on that in a little greater detail,
and any advice you might be willing to give us in that regard?
Mr. Phillips. Well, when we have a breakthrough technology
that hits like digital or like in the case of nanotechnology,
maybe the Federal Government needs to look at investment tax
credits on spending by companies in nanotechnology of a variety
of types so that they can capitalize their manufacturing
facilities faster, perhaps do more research and development
faster, and through investment tax credits produce new goods
that return in the purchase of those goods through sales taxes
and other type taxes, including income taxes on a federal
basis, actually multiply the receipts on the tax base, even
though in the early stages of those companies those changes
could, without question, accelerate the development, and also
lead to more investments in those companies from the private
sector if it favored a technology as robust and with as much
potential as nanotechnology.
Mr. Lance. Thank you. I certainly agree with that.
Dr. Tour, the regulatory landscape for nanotechnology
drives industries as how they look today. If you would, sir,
could you expand on the regulatory process for startups and how
Congress might be involved in improving the situation.
Mr. Tour. All right. So we don't have good standards now to
make comparisons and upon which to really target ways to
mitigate the problem so that the improvement of standards
against which we could direct these would certainly be a help
for us to be able to move these along so we generate new
materials. And then sometimes our--I served for 3 years on E-
Track, which is a Department of Commerce committee to rewrite
some of the export control laws, and because we have a very
large book of things that we can export--and it was interesting
that we couldn't export many of the things that are made
overseas in much larger volumes than we are even making them.
So we were hampered in that way and many ways, and that even
hampered the basic research of collaborating with people.
So things become archaic, and after 3 years on that
committee, I stepped down because everything that was proposed
I wasn't even sure if it was even read. And so I am not sure
that anything ultimately changed as a result of that.
So I realize that this is a big country and lots of things
have to be done, but some of these barriers that really there
was no good scientific rationale for the inhibitions that were
there.
Mr. Lance. And from your expertise, could those matters be
changed by administrative rule and regulation, or would it
require a statutory change, change from us here in Congress?
Mr. Tour. I am sorry, I don't know that.
Mr. Lance. Certainly it might be easier if it were only to
require some sort of change from the Department of Commerce or
another agency of the Executive Branch, but obviously, we and
our co-equal responsibilities are looking for statutory change
as well to improve the situation.
Mr. Tour. Right.
Mr. Lance. Certainly I thank you for your service, and it
may seem frustrating but I certainly think it is important that
talented professionals, including academics, are involved in
what you do, sir.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back the balance of my
time.
Mr. Terry. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chairman. And that concludes
our question and answer period. I want to thank all of you for
being here. I think you have enlightened us, especially on
policy aspects, which is hopefully one of your goals here
today. I think you have given us several things to think about
how we can help improve the research and development of
nanotechnologies in the United States, so I appreciate that.
So with that, did you want to say something?
Ms. Schakowsky. Well, let me just thank the witnesses. I
think this is a real growth area for our country if we do the
right thing. We have the brains. We have an infrastructure to
do this, and it would just be such a pity if we lost this in
the global marketplace.
So thank you very much for underscoring that, and for
sharing your expertise.
Mr. Terry. So we have up to 2 weeks to submit written
questions to you. Don't know if there will be any, but we have
that and if we do send you written questions, we would
appreciate about a couple of weeks timeframe to get your
written answers back to us.
With that, thank you again. You have been a great service
to us, and we are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:45 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Material submitted for inclusion in the record follows:]
Prepared statement of Hon. Henry A. Waxman
Today's hearing is a valuable one. We will learn how
scientists and engineers are making significant advances by
working with nanoparticles.
Nanoparticles are extremely small. One nanometer is one
billionth of a meter. A single hair is roughly 75 to 100
thousand nanometers wide.
Nanotechnology can be used to reduce the effect of oil
spills on the environment, improve solar panel output, and help
detect early-stage Alzheimer's disease. Researchers are working
on even more applications, including groundbreaking uses in
cancer treatment and the fight against climate change.
At the federal level, the National Nanotechnology
Initiative, or NNI, provides participating agencies with a
coordinated framework for supporting nanotechnology research,
development, and manufacturing. I applaud President Obama and
the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology,
or PCAST, for their ongoing support of NNI and their broader
efforts to bolster this field.
Thanks in part to their efforts, the United States leads
the world in nanotechnology investment and research. Important
research occurs throughout the country, including at the
California NanoSystems Institute, which I am proud to say has
one of its two locations within the district I represent, at
UCLA.
But our lead in this technology is being challenged.
Nanotechnology is flourishing not just here, but around the
globe. Nations have devoted significant effort--and public
funds--in order to become the most attractive place to
research, develop, commercialize, and manufacture
nanotechnology products.
One problem is that in the United States, the NNI has not
been reauthorized since 2003, when Congress first gave the
initiative a statutory foundation and appropriated funds for
its work. In addition, public funding for nanotechnology
research has been significantly cut over the last few years,
with total federal R&D funding for the field dropping nearly 20
percent from 2010 to 2014. This is a mistake.
We in Congress should demonstrate our support for
nanotechnology by increasing scientific research funding in
next year's budget. We should enhance the educational
opportunities available to students and workers to ensure they
have the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
knowledge necessary for jobs in nanotechnology. And we should
play a more active role in the NNI. The program should be
reauthorized, and in doing so, we should provide an updated,
cohesive vision for how the U.S. can stay competitive on a
global scale.
I am pleased that the Subcommittee will have the
opportunity today to learn more about nanotechnology from those
who know it best. While the main topic of this hearing is
innovation, I encourage members and panelists to remember, in
addition, that advances through nanotechnology are made
possible by altering particles at a very basic level. As
nanotechnology becomes more prolific, scientists like those on
this panel must come to understand exactly what the
environmental, health, and safety implications are. And members
of this Committee must work with agencies, including the
Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug
Administration, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, to
ensure that human health and safety and the environment are
protected.
Thank you.
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