nanoREV.

Find the 10^-9 funding! (University Edition)

I wonder if there’s a giant chart somewhere that shows how all the nanotechnology funding gets funneled from our taxes to the hands of the people doing the research. If so, I’d like to see it. The alternative may be for us here at nanoREV to dig up the treasure for our readers. So I’m introducing the first ever post of what will hopefully be a series that I’m calling “Find the 10^-9 funding”. Essentially, I’ll look for interesting nanotechnology-related funding opportunities being offered by the alphabet soup of government agencies (possibly falling under the giant umbrella that is the NNI), and post short summaries. Simple as that.

So first on the list is a series of funding opportunities sponsored by NSF: “Nanotechnology Undergraduate Education (NUE) in Engineering” (warning: sometimes the page doesn’t like to load). It looks like this program has been ongoing since early 2004, with past recipients including “A Tour in Nanoland…” (California State University in 2004) , “NSEC: Center for Nanotechnology in Society at University of California” ( 2006), and most recently, “Preparing Undergraduates for Careers in Nanotechnology” (University of Central Florida in 2007).

Primarily the funding for this year’s award will go toward the implementation of curriculum “with relevance to devices and systems and/or on the societal, ethical, economic and/or environmental issues relevant to nanotechnology”. They are expecting to give away 10 awards, with a max of $200,000 for two years.

The deadline is fast approaching, but with such a broad description it looks like developing a proposal that suits the needs of this program won’t be very difficult.

Good luck!