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Regional Institute for Nanoscale Material Science and Engineering

The University of Arkansas is currently committed to a new building that will be the home of the research and educational activities of the Regional Institute for Nanoscale Material Science and Engineering. This new facility will build on Arkansas strength and lead the mid-region of the nation with expanded opportunities for innovation and create a level of excitement and momentum that is unmatched. It will deliver a competitive workforce, a new small business, strengthen existing companies, and be the "idea center" for the region, the place where nanomaterials become new or improved products. 

Currently the University has $20 million for this new building. In addition, the Board of Trustees has approved the effort to secure support of $8 million more to bring the total amount committed to $28 million. This will make possible the construction of a three-story building with about half the building having an unfinished interior. The plan is to complete this in the near future to support a growing research and education effort building on a strong existing foundation.

The new building will be:

1. A strong partnership between a broad range of theoretical and experimental approaches made by an interdisciplinary team of chemists, physicists, biologist, and engineers.  The needed partnership is even larger when one realizes that by experiment, we mean much more than growth of novel nanomaterials. It is crucial to be able to characterize in detail the material quality in order to correlate our understanding with device performance.
2. A Regional Center, home of the campus leading edge instrumentation that provides access to all students and faculty to growth, characterization, and fabrication at the nanoscale. The building will house over $30 M in instrumentation including the best Molecular Beam Epitaxy and Colloidal Growth Facilities; Scanning Tunneling and Transmission Electron Microscopy Facilities; Device Fabrication Facility; Optical Characterization and Electron Transport Facilities; and Theoretical Modeling Ability.
3. The home of a novel education program that supplies the nation with a prepared workforce that is innovative at the nanoscale and creates and implements the best ideas into products. An education program that breaks away from the norm with a small business as a classroom and a novel student laboratory designed to practice innovation. This is effort is now supported by NSF programs and by the Hughes Foundation with over $8 M in the last 5 years. 
4. A program that produces leading science and engineering breakthroughs that enables new nanoscale technology. The Institute faculty has demonstrated a publication track record of over 100 publications per year in the most prestigious journals. Publications that were cited over 3000 times a year by their peers. 
5. An Institute that will spin-off small business and an aggressive effort to strengthen existing ones, creating new jobs. The Institute researchers have already established 5 small businesses with over 40 employees.
6. A Hub of interdisciplinary activity that provides a unified state-wide collaborative effort between UAF, UALR, UAMS, UAPB, and ASU on nanoscale science and products targeting energy, medicine, and the environment.

A solid assessment of Arkansas existing strength in nanotechnology begins by noting that the state was an early entry into the competition. Through competitive grants, Arkansas invested $30 million in Federal and State support to establish a state-of-the-art nanoscale infrastructure; $10 million in Federal and Foundation support in K-12, undergraduate, and graduate education in nanoscience and engineering to create a workforce; and $10 million in Federal and State support for 5 new small business spin-offs in nanotechnology to create over 40 new jobs.

This investment has positioned Arkansas as the state with the strongest opportunity to emerge as the regional leader in new ideas at the nanoscale and in the commercialization of resulting nanotechnologies.

The race is on, and there are two things that we could say with certainty. The state which secures the best ideas for capturing and exploiting nanomaterials will lead regional innovation and economic development, and it is certain that those ideas will be found and a regional leader WILL appear.  Accepting this premise, it is immediately and critically important that Arkansas seize this opportunity to build on its early investment and become the regional power in discovery and fabrication of new nanoscale materials and products that impact energy, healthcare, environment, and sustainability.