[Federal Register Volume 80, Number 116 (Wednesday, June 17, 2015)]
[Notices]
[Pages 34713-34715]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2015-14914]


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OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY


Nanotechnology-Inspired Grand Challenges for the Next Decade

ACTION: Notice of request for information.

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SUMMARY: The purpose of this Request for Information (RFI) is to seek 
suggestions for Nanotechnology-Inspired Grand Challenges for the Next 
Decade: Ambitious but achievable goals that harness nanoscience, 
nanotechnology, and innovation to solve important national or global 
problems and have the potential to capture the public's imagination. 
This RFI is intended to gather information from external stakeholders 
about potential grand challenges that will help guide the science and 
technology priorities of Federal agencies, catalyze new research 
activities, foster the commercialization of nanotechnologies, and 
inspire different sectors to invest in achieving the goals. Input is 
sought from nanotechnology stakeholders including researchers in 
academia and industry, non-governmental organizations, scientific and 
professional societies, and all other interested members of the public.

DATES: Responses must be received by July 16, 2015 to be considered.

ADDRESSES: You may submit responses by any of the following methods 
(email is preferred):
     Email: [email protected]. Include 
[Nanotechnology-Inspired Grand Challenges] in the subject line of the 
message. The response may be in the body of or as an attachment to the 
email.
     Mail: Attn: Tarek Fadel, National Nanotechnology 
Coordination Office, ATTN: NNI Grand Challenges RFI, 4201 Wilson Blvd., 
Stafford II, Suite 405, Arlington, VA 22230. If submitting a response 
by mail, please allow sufficient time for mail processing.
    Instructions: Responses must be unclassified and should not contain 
any information that might be considered proprietary, confidential, or 
personally identifying (such as home address or social security 
number).
    Disclaimer: Federal agencies may or may not use any responses to 
this RFI as a basis for a subsequent project, program, or funding 
opportunity. Responses to this RFI will not be returned. The Office of 
Science and Technology Policy is under no obligation to acknowledge 
receipt of the information received, or provide feedback to respondents 
with respect to any information submitted under this RFI. No requests 
for a bid package or solicitation will be accepted; no bid package or 
solicitation exists. In order to protect the integrity of any possible 
future acquisition, no additional information will be provided and no 
appointments for presentations will be made in reference to this RFI. 
This RFI is issued solely for information and planning purposes and 
does not constitute a solicitation. Responders to this RFI will have no 
competitive advantage in receiving any awards related to the submitted 
input on a potential Nanotechnology-Inspired Grand Challenge.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Tarek Fadel, (703) 292-7926, 
[email protected], National Nanotechnology Coordination 
Office. Any requests for clarification must be received no later than 
seven (7) business days prior to the close of this RFI in order to 
receive a timely response.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 

Background Information

    The National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), established in 2001, 
is a U.S. Government research and development initiative of 20 Federal 
departments, independent agencies, and independent commissions 
(hereafter referred to as ``agencies'') working together toward the 
common challenging vision of a future in which the ability to 
understand and control matter at the nanoscale leads to a revolution in 
technology and industry that benefits society (see www.nano.gov). The 
combined, coordinated efforts of the participating agencies have 
accelerated the discovery, development, and deployment of 
nanotechnology to address agency mission goals and broader national

[[Page 34714]]

needs. Over the next decade, nanotechnology has the potential to build 
on the great progress already made under the NNI and solve a wide range 
of important national and global problems.
    In its recent review of the NNI, the President's Council of 
Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) recommended that agencies 
engage research, development, and industrial stakeholders in the 
identification and selection of grand challenges in order to focus and 
amplify the impact of Federal nanotechnology activities (see 
www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/PCAST/pcast_fifth_nni_review_oct2014_final.pdf). Grand challenges are an 
element of the President's Strategy for American Innovation that help 
catalyze breakthroughs needed to advance national priorities. A 
Nanotechnology-Inspired Grand Challenge should be an ambitious but 
achievable goal that harnesses nanoscience, nanotechnology, and 
innovation to solve important national or global problems and has the 
potential to capture the public's imagination. The challenge should 
inspire different sectors to invest resources to achieve the ambitious 
goal and stimulate a network of activities that will drive scientific 
ideas towards commercial products while catalyzing new discoveries.
    An effective grand challenge has the following characteristics (as 
defined by PCAST as noted above, as well as the Administration here: 
http://www.whitehouse.gov/grand-challenges):
     A measurable end-point that is highly ambitious but 
achievable.
     Requires advances in fundamental scientific knowledge, 
tools, and infrastructure for successful completion.
     Has clear intermediate milestones (measurable and valuable 
in their own right) that will be achieved en route to the final goals.
     Drives the need for collaboration between multiple 
disciplines, some of which do not normally interact, causing multiple 
organizations to come together to collaborate and to share resources 
and information to solve the challenge.
     Spans efforts from discovery and fundamental science to 
engineering demonstration and commercialization; i.e., catalyzes the 
transition of technologies from laboratory to market.
     Is too big to be undertaken by one or even a few 
organizations.
     Is exciting enough to motivate decision makers to provide 
funding and resources and multiple organizations to collaborate, share 
resources, and information to solve the challenge.
     Captures the imagination of the public, thereby 
facilitating strong support for the resources required to achieve the 
goals.
    Although nanoscale science and technology is a broadly enabling 
discipline, not every worthwhile grand challenge is likely to be solved 
using nanotechnology. The objective of this RFI is to identify 
compelling, ambitious grand challenges where the known benefits of 
nanoscale science and technology, including the unique properties of 
engineered nanomaterials, are likely to play an enabling role in the 
solution to each challenge within the next decade.

Information Requested

    The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) requests 
suggestions for nanotechnology-inspired grand challenges achievable in 
the next decade that solve important national or global problems and 
are relevant to the mission of one or more of the agencies 
participating in the NNI (see www.nano.gov/partners). In order to 
illustrate how such grand challenges should be framed and to help 
stimulate the development of additional grand challenges, the NNI 
agencies, working with the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office 
(NNCO) and OSTP, have developed a number of potential grand challenges 
for the next decade, which are listed below. In addition to seeking 
suggestions from the community for other grand challenges, comments are 
sought as to the merits of these examples, including how they could be 
improved, along with additional information supporting these examples 
as detailed in the questions that follow.

Examples of Potential Nanotechnology-Inspired Grand Challenges for the 
Next Decade

    By 2025, the nanotechnology R&D community is challenged to achieve 
the following:
    1. Increase the five-year survival rates by 50 percent for the most 
difficult to treat cancers. Although great progress has been made in 
diagnosing and treating many types of cancer, some types remain very 
deadly, such as pancreatic, lung, and some types of brain cancers where 
fewer than 20 percent of patients survive five years. From multiplexed 
biomarker detection enabled by nanosensor arrays for early diagnosis, 
to targeted nanoparticle-based therapeutics, nanotechnology has 
tremendous potential to dramatically improve the outcome and quality of 
life for these cancer patients compared to their current prognoses. The 
resulting technological advances will undoubtedly improve the diagnosis 
and treatment of other types of cancer and diseases as well.
    2. Create devices no bigger than a grain of rice that can sense, 
compute, and communicate without wires or maintenance for 10 years, 
enabling an ``internet of things'' revolution. Incorporating sensors, 
electronics, and networking into a vast array of everyday objects to 
create an Internet of Things will lead to a revolution in how we 
interact with the world--from traffic jam-free cities and self-driving 
cars, to clothing that monitors our health and safety. This revolution 
will require new paradigms for logic, memory, communication, and 
sensing, along with energy storage, harvesting, and transmission, that 
dramatically reduce power consumption and extend the life of the 
devices needed to interconnect this new world.
    3. Create computer chips that are 100 times faster yet consume less 
power. The technology that has enabled ever-faster and more powerful 
computer chips that are the foundation of the information technology 
revolution is reaching its limit. In order to continue to benefit from 
the advances in computing speed and power we have come to rely on, 
revolutionary breakthroughs are needed to dramatically lower the power 
needed to operate the basic electronic switch underlying the digital 
computing era. Achieving this goal will lead to portable devices that 
anticipate our needs, faster ``exascale'' computers that will 
accurately model the planet's climate and rapidly design new materials, 
and energy efficient data centers that will quickly turn the deluge of 
data that the world is generating into useful information when and 
where it is needed.
    4. Manufacture atomically-precise materials with fifty times the 
strength of aluminum at half the weight and the same cost. The 
development of new materials enabled by nanotechnology is hindered by 
the fact that their properties often fall far short of what would be 
predicted based upon the properties of nanoscale building blocks. 
Atomically precise manufacturing will enable ultra-lightweight, 
durable, high strength materials that could drastically increase the 
energy efficiency of cars and other transportation systems, and lead to 
dramatic improvements in a broad range of other applications, ranging 
from catalysts that convert sunlight to fuel, to electronics that 
consume much less energy.
    5. Reduce the cost of turning sea water into drinkable water by a 
factor of

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four. Water supplies world-wide are vulnerable to threats such as 
contaminants, changes in land use, shifting and increasing population, 
climate change, and extreme weather. And one in nine people (750 
million worldwide) lack access to clean drinking water. Although sea 
water is widely available, it currently costs approximately $2,000 to 
desalinate an acre foot of water (or about $6 per 1000 gallons)--about 
twice the rate a typical homeowner pays for tap water. Advances in 
nanotechnology, such as nanoporous materials for separation membranes 
and nanoparticles that remove contaminants, offer the possibility of 
much faster, cheaper, and more environmentally-friendly methods for 
desalination and other treatment applications that could dramatically 
improve the global supply of drinkable water.
    6. Determine the environmental, health, and safety characteristics 
of a nanomaterial in a month. The need to more quickly and accurately 
determine whether engineered nanomaterials may pose a risk to the 
public and the environment continues to be a major challenge to the 
commercialization of nanotechnology for societal and public benefit. 
Much more efficient methods, including high-throughput toxicity 
measurements, sensors to detect nanomaterials in the environment, and 
accurate, predictive models for risk assessment, are needed to ensure 
that the safety of each product containing engineered nanomaterials is 
understood throughout its lifecycle, enabling new products to be 
quickly and confidently made available to the public.

Questions

    Respondents are asked to address the following general questions 
for each grand challenge proposed, including for any of the grand 
challenge concepts listed above (or proposed variations):
     What is the audacious yet achievable goal proposed?
     Why is it important for the Federal government and others 
to invest in solving this challenge?
     What would success look like? How would you know the 
challenge has been met? For the examples provided, are the proposed end 
points appropriate and ambitious yet achievable?
     What would be potential nanotechnology solutions to the 
challenge and what intermediate steps and activities are necessary to 
develop those solutions?
     What potential metrics and milestones could be used to 
measure intermediate progress towards solving the challenge?
     Can the challenge be achieved in the next decade? If not, 
how long will it take?
     Why is this challenge worth pursuing now? What recent 
advances, trends, or research point to this challenge being solvable in 
the proposed time frame?
     What opportunities are there for partnerships between the 
Federal government, State and regional governments, foundations, 
industry, and academia to support the solution of the challenge?
     Why do you expect this challenge to capture the public's 
imagination?

Ted Wackler,
Deputy Chief of Staff and Assistant Director.
[FR Doc. 2015-14914 Filed 6-16-15; 8:45 am]
 BILLING CODE 3270-F5-P