That is the amount of a three-year grant from the Pennsylvania Technology Investment Authority announced yesterday to fund creation of a Nanotechnology Center. The center will be directed by a committee of faculty members from participating universities, although researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University worked with Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania to develop the concept and request the state grant. Enthusiasts say nanotechnology will have a broad range of applications, enhancing the performance of everything from weapons propellants to computer hard drives to medical diagnostics.
Nanotechnology is the wave of the future . . .
The center's management committee will choose the research to be funded, and the money will be administered by Ben Franklin of Southeastern Pennsylvania. Although the grant is from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the founders hope to involve universities and companies from neighboring states as well. Nanotechnology researchers at Rutgers University and the University of Delaware who have been told about the project have responded with interest, said Albert A. Koenig, a Ben Franklin executive. In making this request, the President said eventual products of nanotechnology might include materials lighter than steel but 10 times as strong, storage devices the size of a sugar cube that could hold all the information in the Library of Congress, or a method of detecting cancerous tumors only a few cells in size. Formation of the local Nanotechnology Center means that, for the first time, this region is getting in on the ground floor of a new industry, the president of Ben Franklin of Southeastern Pennsylvania, RoseAnn B. Rosenthal, said.