Select an Institute to view summary: QB3  |  Calit2  |  CITRIS  |  CNSI

CNSI California Nanosystems Institute Lead campus: UCLA Cooperating campus: UC Santa Barbara for more information: www.cnsi.ucla.edu

Smaller, faster and more efficient computers. A light bulb that uses less energy and lasts for years. Lighter and stronger building materials that may make cars, buses and other forms of transportation more energy efficient. Medicines that target the molecular mistakes that cause disease, rather than treating the symptoms of illness.

These advancements are among the goals of the California NanoSystems Institute, a research enterprise based on the idea of exploiting the realm of the very, very small to create new ways to manufacture products, advance information technology and transform the practice of medicine.

The California NanoSystems Institute will explore the power and potential of manipulating structures atom-by-atom to engineer new materials, devices and systems that will revolutionize virtually every aspect of our quality of life, including medical delivery and health care, information technologies, and innovations for the environment.

The ability to design new materials and assemble them into complex systems permits the creation of structures-by-design with idealized properties far beyond those found in nature. These structures and the potential they hold will be the catalysts for the technological revolutions that will define the enterprises of the 21st century and drive the health and growth of both the California and the global economy.

The challenge of bringing about and participating in such a revolution, however, will require a greater confluence of insights and expertise than has ever been called together before. Drawing on the tremendous strengths already in place among its key participants, the institute will serve as a model for bringing together the people, the knowledge and the resources required to exploit the technological and economic promise of nanosystems. To produce and understand complex nanosystems incorporating both biological and electronic nanostructures will require fundamentally new approaches to fabrication, modeling, imaging, characterization, and data analysis.

With major new buildings on both campuses, the California NanoSystems Institute will be the premier place in the world for academic, industrial and national lab researchers working on nanosystems. The research efforts will be complementary, but also collaborative. The centers will be linked by common management, a single graduate student recruiting/education program, and shared user facilities.

Dick Lampman, vice president-research, Hewlett-Packard Co.:
"We see in the California NanoSystems Institute a tremendous potential of leveraging academic and industrial expertise to tackle the pressing and broad-ranging research challenges posed by nanosystems. Indeed, the establishment of the California NanoSystems Institute is an exceptional opportunity to build together the nanoscience and nanotechnology infrastructure in California that will be so important to our future."

Roberto Peccei, vice chancellor-research, UCLA:
"By linking the California NanoSystems Institute with the efforts of industry in this emerging area, we are creating the opportunity to quickly move discoveries from the laboratory bench top to the marketplace. Our corporate partners will also play a crucial role in helping us to educate the scientists and engineers needed to bring nanosystems into everyday applications."

(en Español)