Archive for February, 2010

NanoBusiness Alliance Washington DC Roundtable-March 15-17th-Agenda

Posted on February 22nd, 2010 in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Today, I would like to announce that on Tuesday, March 16th at 4:30, we are invited to meet with Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR). Senator Pryor introduced the Nanotechnology Safety Act of 2010 on January 21, 2010 http://www.pryor.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=92f252e2-7d7c-453d-8be8-f80c3f764ec8

RESERVE HOTEL TODAY – ROOM BLOCK CLOSING
We have a room block at the Hotel Rouge, rate $229 per night. Please reserve your room today by contacting our Event Manager, Alisa Kronshage at alisa@nanobusiness.org.

Hotel Rouge
1315 16th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-232-8000
Reservations: 800-738-1202
http://www.rougehotel.com/

PROGRAM
Our DC event begins on Monday evening, March 15th with our Opening Dinner (details to follow)

Tuesday, March 16th
8:30am – 1:00pm Meeting at the Offices of K&L Gates, Legislative Meetings

2:00pm Congressional Nanotechnology Caucus
Moderator: Senator Ron Wyden, (D-OR) http://wyden.senate.gov/

4:30pm Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) http://www.pryor.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Home

Wednesday, March 17th – NanoBusiness Alliance Federal Roundtable
Location:
Offices of Foley & Lardner Conference Center
3000 K Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C.

AGENDA
MEETING OBJECTIVES
– Stimulate dialogue between NanoBusiness Alliance Members and Federal Agencies
– Find out the latest on regulatory policy/impending regulatory actions and federal research
initiatives
– Familiarize NanoBusiness Alliance members with federal product approval authorities and
processes and innovation strategies, with an emphasis on pending developments

8:00am – 8:30am Coffee/Registration

8:30am – 8:45am Welcoming Remarks – Purpose of Meeting
Vincent Caprio, Executive Director, NanoBusiness Alliance

8:45am – 9:45am Regulatory policy movement for nano – Cross-agency and international perspectives
Moderator: Richard A. Canady, PhD DABT, Senior Advisor, McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP

Travis Earles, Assistant Director for Nanotechnology, Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President

Clayton Teague, Director, National Nanotechnology Coordinating Office, Executive Office of the President

Shaun Clancy, PhD, Director of Product Regulatory Services, Evonik, Chairman of ACC Nanotechnology Panel

9:45am – 10:15am
Celia Merzbacher, PhD, Vice President – Innovative Partnerships, Semiconductor Research Corporation
– The Nanoelectronics Research Initiative: How Industry Gets Value from the NNI through Public-Private Partnership

10:15am – 11:15am Chemical and consumer product risk management policy and regulatory actions
Moderator: Charlie Auer, Charles Auer & Associates, LLC

Lynn L. Bergeson, Founder, Bergeson & Campbell, P.C.

Jeff Morris, National Program Director for Nanotechnology, EPA/ORD
– Sustainable development and EHS research priorities supporting risk management

Mary Ann Danello (invited), Associate Executive Director for Health Sciences, Consumer Product Safety Commission
– Nano research at CPSC: Supporting risk management

11:15am – 12:15pm Policy and guidance developments for FDA
Moderator: David Rosen, Partner and Co-chair of the Life Sciences Industry Team, Foley & Lardner LLP. Member of the firm’s Government & Public Policy, and Corporate Compliance & Enforcement Practices and the Health Care, Nanotechnology and Food Industry Teams.

Mitchell Cheeseman, Deputy Director of the Office of Food Additive Safety, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, FDA
– Food additive and cosmetics guidance

Subhas Malghan, Deputy Director for Program Policy and Evaluation, Office of Science and Engineering Laboratories FDA/CDRH
– Science and regulatory issues relevant to review of products containing nanoscale materials

12:15pm – 1:15pm Lunch

1:15pm – 2:00pm Workplace and Worker Protection Issues
Moderator: Phil Lippel, PhD

David O’Connor, Director, Office of Chemical Hazards (Non-metals) presenting for OSHA

Chuck Geraci, PhD, Coordinator, Nanotechnology Research Center, NIOSH

Kristen M. Kulinowski, PhD, Dept of Chemistry, Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology International Council on Nanotechnology, Rice University

2:00pm – 2:20pm
Lynn L. Bergeson, Founder, Bergeson & Campbell, P.C.
– Effectively Navigating Your Business around Uncertainties: Making the most from careful planning, regulatory awareness, and smart planning.

2:20pm – 2:40pm
Richard A. Canady, PhD DABT, Senior Advisor, McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP
– What did we hear today and what does it mean for business? – Views on compliance, liability and investment based on the regulatory policy movements, from a former insider.

2:40pm – 3:00pm BREAK

3:00pm – 4:00pm Panel Discussion, NNI EHS Research Priorities and their relationship to risk management decision support: Taking a look at the PCAST Working Group on Nanotechnology and National Research Council’s Advisory Committee on “A Research Strategy for Environmental, Health, and Safety Aspects of Engineered Nanomaterials.”
Moderator: Vincent Caprio, Executive Director, NanoBusiness Alliance

Terry Medley, Chair, Expert Group on Nanotechnology, The Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD (and Global Director, Corporate Regulatory Affairs DuPont), and Member of the PCAST Nanotechnology Working Group

Jenifer Sass, Group,Senior Scientist, National Resources Defense Council and member of the PCAST Nanotechnology Working Group

Ray Wassel, Senior Program Officer, Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, National Research Council

4:00pm – 4:30pm Keynote finale – Innovation focus at the Obama Administration

4:30pm Adjourn

More details on the Agenda to follow and please make your DC plans soon with alisa@nanobusiness.org.

Regards,

Vincent Caprio “It’s Green, It’s Clean, It’s Never Seen – That’s Nanotechnology”
www.vincentcaprio.org
Executive Director
NanoBusiness Alliance
203-733-1949
vincentcaprio@nynanobusiness.org

NbA Washington DC Roundtable Registration Form

NanoBusiness Alliance Congratulates 5 Nanotechnology PECASE Winners

Posted on February 17th, 2010 in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Dean Kamen http://www.dekaresearch.com/index.shtml, Inventor, Scientist, PhD, was our Keynote Speaker at our September 2009 Conference. Mr. Kamen’s central premise was that America is a celebrity driven culture and children and adults cannot name one living scientist or engineer but can name 10 celebrities in seconds. Mr. Kaman’s 90-minute speech http://www.usfirst.org/ hit me hard and I www.vincentcaprio.org have taken up his challenge to highlight young leaders in the Nanotechnlogy community.

This week, we continue our look at some of the rising stars of nanoscience. Let’s jump ahead to the most recent group of Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) recipients, who were honored at the White House on January 13th (photo attached). Among those selected for awards were nanotechnologists nominated by the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Commerce.

Gary Baker, a chemist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Lab, was nominated by DOE for pioneering work in synthesizing new environmentally sustainable solvents and exploring their applications. Baker and his colleagues are developing low-vapor-pressure solvents, known as ionic liquids, which could replace less “green” fluids in a wide range of chemical processes including the production of energy from biomass and fuel cell electrolysis. Nanotechnology enters Baker’s work in two different ways. First, he employs ionic liquids as part of a new technique for making uniform-sized nanoparticles called the melt-emulsion-quench approach. This can be used to synthesize a variety of magnetic and non-magnetic materials useful for drug delivery, magnetic resonance imaging, and protein separations. Second, as part of his program to better characterize ionic liquids, Baker has developed innovative nanostructured sensors with unique optical properties. Baker’s group uses these sensors for precision spectroscopic measurements using techniques such as surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy. These sensors could find many other uses, for example in monitoring catalytic processes or performing bioassays in medical laboratories.

Jeffrey Neaton also represents the Department of Energy, through the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Neaton directs the Theory of Nanostructured Materials Facility at the LBNL’s Molecular Foundry. Neaton’s computational support group provides access to Nano, a 432-processor Linux cluster with a theoretical peak performance of 3.1 Teraflops. Nano is devoted exclusively to nanoscience projects undertaken by the Foundry’s staff and participants in the lab’s extensive program for outside users. Neaton himself has performed important calculations of electron flow in nanowires, molecular transistors, and other nanoscale electronic or optical devices. He works closely with experimental colleagues – both Foundry staff and users from industry or academia. Their goal is to simulate the fundamental physics of devices which combine inorganic and organic materials in nanostructures, and to see how mechanical strain and interfacial phenomenon effect device performance. By leading to a better understanding of the behavior of nanoelectronic and nanophotonic devices, this work could help us engineer practical, inexpensive solar cells, solid state lighting products, and low-power high-performance electronics.

Bruce J. Hinds, nominated for PECASE by the National Institutes of Health, is the William Bryan Associate Professor of Chemical and and Materials Engineering at the University of Kentucky. Hinds’ award recognizes his efforts to exploit the properties of carbon nanotubes to improve the delivery of drugs via skin patches. Hinds has developed techniques for aligning carbon nanotubes across a thin membrane, and for precisely placing chemical groups at the tube ends. Water can flow through the aligned nanotubes virtually friction free, a surprising effect that several groups are exploring for low-pressure filtration systems. Hinds, on the other hand, has developed a method to precisely functionalize the ends of the nanotubes, allowing him to control the passage of various molecules through his membranes. Recognizing that this kind of selective transport mimics the biological action of protein channels, Hinds went one step further and incorporated electrostatic control elements to simulate a gated ion channel. NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse is supporting Hinds’ work to develop these electrically controllable membranes into a better system for delivering drugs through the skin in a highly controllable fashion. Initial efforts focused on three drugs are already widely used with conventional transdermal patches: Clonidine (for opiate withdrawal therapy), fentanyl (for pain management), and, perhaps best-known, nicotine (for smoking cessation).

Seth R. Bank, an Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Texas, was nominated by the Department of Defense along with Rashid Zia of Brown University (profiled in our January 15th newsletter). Professor Bank works with electronic devices built from III-V semiconductors, which he grows using the now-standard technique of molecular beam epitaxy. But by adding a decidedly non-standard component to the mix – semi-metal nanoparticles – he can modify key electronic parameters of the materials in desirable ways. Increased phonon scattering can be used to create better thermoelectric generators, for example, by decreasing thermal conductivity. In just over three years at UT, Bank has already established an advanced MBE facility, demonstrated tunnel junctions with 225 times the current of the best previous devices, and collaborated with a solar industry start-up on using nanocomposite semiconductors to improve the interlayer connections in multijunction photovoltaic cells. He is also building mid-infrared solid state lasers and Terahertz radiation sources, exploring parts of the electromagnetic spectrum of great interest for communications, remote sensing, and medical applications.

Dean DeLongchamp, a chemical engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, was nominated by the Department of Commerce for his work to improve organic devices for flexible circuits, displays, solar cells, and energy storage. DeLongchamp is developing a suite of measurement techniques which allow scientists to measure the microscopic and nanoscopic structure of an experimental device design and correlate these features with processing parameters and ultimate performance. DeLongchamp’s personal specialty, Near Edge X-ray Absorption Fine Structure spectroscopy, or NEXAFS, utilizes the bright and highly focused X-ray beams from a synchrotron light source to determine the composition and orientation of molecules in an organic film. The measurement suite he is developing at NIST also includes scanned probe microscopy, electron microscopy, polarized light spectroscopy at X-ray, visible, and infrared wavelengths, and light scattering. Recently, DeLongchamp worked closely with Merck scientists to show how layer tilt and the interleaving of side chains contribute to high carrier mobilities in films of the organic semiconductor pBTTT. Other industrial collaborators including Corning, IBM, and Plextronics are using similar studies to guide the development of materials and processing techniques for organic electronic applications.

We hope to see you in Washington DC http://nanobusiness.org/index.php/public-policy March 15-17th for our Annual DC Event. Attached you will find a registration form. To register please email alisa@nanobusiness.org.

Regards,

Vincent Caprio “It’s Green, It’s Clean, It’s Never Seen – That’s Nanotechnology”
www.vincentcaprio.org
Executive Director
NanoBusiness Alliance
203-733-1949
vincentcaprio@nynanobusiness.org

NbA Washington DC Roundtable Registration Form
Obama_PECASE

NanoBusiness Alliance -1st QTR Financial Market Update -Tesla files S-1

Posted on February 5th, 2010 in Uncategorized | No Comments »

On September 9, 2009 at our 8th Annual NanoBusiness Alliance Conference, Scott Livingston, CEO of Livingston Securities http://www.livingstonsecurities.com/ spoke of the future of Investing in Nanotechnology. Livingston said, “If A123 http://www.a123systems.com/ has a successful public offering this month, then I see the IPO window opening for other Nanotechnology based companies starting in the 1st Quarter 2010.” A123 went public on Sept. 24th, 2009 at $13.50 per share. As of today 02-02-10 it closed at $17.88.

Last Friday, our friends in the Nanotechnology Community, Tesla Motors http://www.teslamotors.com/, filed their S-1 http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000119312510017054/ds1.htm. At present time, there are 7 companies in registration for IPOs. These 7 companies, who have attended NanoBusiness Alliance events, are collectively backed by over 2 dozen Venture Capital Funds.

In addition to Tesla Motors the other 6 companies are in the niches brought to you by the Science of Nanotechnology:

1) Drug Delivery
2) Personalized Medicine
3) CIGS Solar Cells
4) Regenerative Medicine
5) Enhanced MRI
6) Plug-In Hybrids

Our members should note we have 7 companies that are associated with our Nanotechnology Community that are currently in registration.

Yes, the 1st Quarter of 2010 is an exciting and robust period for investing in Nanotechnology Companies.

I would like to share with you an article by Scott Rickert, President & CEO of Nanofilm http://www.nanofilmtechnology.com/index.aspx?bhcp=1 and NanoBusiness Alliance Board Member.
Taking the NanoPulse – 2010: Welcome to the Nano Decade http://www.industryweek.com/articles/taking_the_nanopulse_–_2010_welcome_to_the_nano_decade_20897.aspx

IMPORTANT REMINDER
Our 9th Annual Washington DC Roundtable Event, hosted by the NanoBusiness Alliance, is being held on Monday, March 15th – Wednesday, March, 17th. We have a room block at the Hotel Rouge, rate $229 per night. Please reserve your room today by contacting our Event Manager, Alisa Kronshage at alisa@nanobusiness.org.

Hotel Rouge
1315 16th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-232-8000
Reservations: 800-738-1202
http://www.rougehotel.com/

Our DC event begins on Monday evening, March 15th with our Opening Dinner.
Tuesday, March 16th – Legislative Meetings, Tuesday Evening Dinner
Wednesday, March 17th – Agency Meetings

I have attached a Registration Form NbA Washington DC Roundtable Registration Form for our DC event. As a benefit of membership in the NanoBusiness Alliance, there is no charge for our DC event. There is a $400 fee for non-members.

I am looking forward to seeing you in Washington DC to discuss a wide range of issues from Investing, Government R&D and the Reauthorization of the NNI http://www.nano.gov/.

Regards,

Vincent Caprio “It’s Green, It’s Clean, It’s Never Seen – That’s Nanotechnology”
www.vincentcaprio.org
Executive Director
NanoBusiness Alliance
203-733-1949
vincentcaprio@nynanobusiness.org