Intellectual Merit: This workshop is intended as a first step toward developing a roadmap for practical innovations in nano/micro-manufacturing. The workshop, to be held at the Ford Motor Conference Center in Dearborn, Michigan, is aimed at having 150 attendees and will be a 2-day meeting with keynote talks, plenary sessions with talks by distinguished academic and industry speakers, panel discussions, breakout group discussions/reports, and debate. An important and distinguishing feature of the workshop will be the emphasis on applications and the needs of customers. The program and audience will represent the application domains of biomedical technologies, communications and information technology, (non-electronic) consumer products, defense and homeland security, electronics, energy and environmental technologies, transportation, and infrastructure development and monitoring. A technical report for the workshop will include abstracts or slides of the presentations as well as the discussion summaries generated by the breakout sessions. This workshop will also provide an industrial outreach opportunity to academic researchers who are otherwise more focused on fundamental science challenges in nano/micro-manufacturing. The researchers will engage with practitioners in multiple industrial sectors, and critically assesses the technical readiness necessary for applications in each sector. Manufacturers and researchers will have the opportunity to discuss with the system OEMs how they can better utilize their individual skills to identify pathways that produce rapid commercialization of new technologies.
Broader Impacts: A significant impact of this workshop will be to unite the voices of stakeholders in nano- and micro-scale manufacturing technologies-potential end-users, customers of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), device/material manufacturers, and researchers- in defining a path forward for application-driven research and commercialization of relevant manufacturing technologies. The participants will discuss the future applications that the customers forecast, what research and development priorities will be required to meet the customers' needs, and what technological innovation will lead to rapid and effective translation of laboratory research into commercial products. The intent is to identify the opportunities, challenges, and pathways of meeting practical industrial needs by leveraging fundamental findings that have resulted from the past decade of investment in nano- and micro-scale research. As such, the workshop will serve to educate students, professors, and industrial manufacturers and end-users of nano- and micro-scale manufacturing technologies.
This proposal sought partial support for a workshop intended as a first step toward developing a roadmap for practical innovations in nano/micro-manufacturing. An important and distinguishing feature of the workshop was the emphasis on applications and the needs of customers. The program and audience represented the application domains of biomedical technologies, communications and information technology, (non-electronic) consumer products, defense and homeland security, electronics, energy and environmental technologies, transportation, and infrastructure development and monitoring. The topics were relevant to the following NSF divisions: Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems (CBET); Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI); Electrical Communications and Cyber Systems (EECS); Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI); and Industrial Innovations and Partnerships (IIP). The workshop was held in Dearborn, Michigan on May 22-23, 2013. There were 186 registered participants including 140 regular registrations, 20 regular students, and 26 local students. There were 66 contributed (non-invited) abstracts submitted for the poster session of which 48 were presented and 4 were elevated to oral presentations. There was also a student poster session of 24 posters and one late news poster. There were 28 oral presentations and 2 panel discussions with 12 panelists. The participant distribution included 28 % from industry, 67% from academia and 5% from government. Details of the workshop are available to the public at http://nano-microworkshop.com.
