150 Attendees Expected for 2009 Summit: Environmentally Responsible Development of Nanotechnology
Martin Armes, Friday, September 25, 2009
The Triangle was recently ranked as the No. 4 “Nano Metro” in the United States by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, trailing only Boston, San Francisco and San Jose.
The ranking is based largely on the number of companies and universities investigating nanotechnology like Duke’s Center for the Environmental Implications of NanoTechnlogy (CEINT), North Carolina State’s Nanotechnology Initiative and UNC-Chapel Hill’s Carolina Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence, among other nanotech programs. Private companies like Liquidia are developing ways to use nanoparticles to better deliver cancer drugs. The global market for nanotech goods is expected to grow from about $147 billion in 2007 to $3.1 trillion in 2015, according to Lux Research.
The Research Triangle Environmental Health Collaborative (The Collaborative) will gather experts from all the aforementioned entities and 150 attendees in all from around the nation at its second annual environmental health summit on October 8-9, 2009. The summit will be held at the North Carolina Biotechnology Center in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park and focus on Environmentally Responsible Development of Nanotechnology.
A priority is to assure a broad and experienced group of participants representing wide areas of expertise and diverse views from their leadership in Federal, State, and local governments; academia, industry, and public interest organizations.
“The Research Triangle region has become the epicenter for contemporary thinking about environmental health, and the Collaborative provides a neutral forum to host candid discussions and to provide advice on the most significant issues facing environmental health and related public policy,” said Collaborative chairman Ken Olden, former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. “There are still many unknowns about the environmental impact of nanotechnology locally, as well as around the world, and we have many experts in our region focused on various solutions.”
This second summit will identify critical issues in nano-enabled product development and manufacturing and explore the nanomanufacturing landscape; so that businesses can overcome barriers to success related to environmental/occupational health concerns. The outcome of this meeting will be a guidance document to highlight these critical issues and provide business and policymakers with recommendations about how to successfully address them.
Mark Wiesner (Duke’s CEINT) will kick off the two-day event outlining various nanotechnology challenges, followed by keynotes from Chad Holliday (DuPont Chairman of Board and former CEO) offering the industry perspective, Joe DeSimone (UNC-Chapel Hill/N.C. State/Liquidia) explaining the bench to market process and Jo Anne Shatkin (CLF Ventures) presenting the life cycle assessment.
James Bonner (N.C State), Brad Brooks (IBM), Jie Liu (Duke) and Gregory Parson (N.C State) will lead a work group about Nanomaterials Fabrication.
Lynn L. Bergeson (Bergeson & Campbell), Jurron Bradley (Lux Research), Nancy A. Monteiro-Riviere (N.C. State) and Michele Ostraat (RTI International) will discuss Nanomaterials Integration into Products.
Steve Beaulieu (RTI International), David Berube (N.C. State), Stephen Klaine (Clemson) and Nigel Walker (National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences) will talk about Nanomaterials Disposal and End of Life Issues.