Both the United States and Japan have recognized the potentially revolutionary contributions of Nanomanufacturing and Nanotechnology to a broad range of fields, including human and environmental health, communications and electronics, national security, and transportation. With significant investments by both countries, exciting research discoveries in nanoscience and nanotechnology have been occurring at an explosive rate. However, for these laboratory discoveries to have an impact on a commercial scale, critical fundamental scientific barriers to achieving high volume, high rate processing at the nanoscale must be overcome. Solving these complex nanomanufacturing problems requires the collaboration of researchers across multiple disciplines as well as across international boundaries, to enable the optimal utilization of expertise and resources.
To facilitate these types of multi-disciplinary, international collaborations, we propose to organize the third program of the NSF-MEXT Young Researchers in Nanotechnology Exchange series initiated in 2003, with an emphasis this year on Nanomanufacturing. The program includes a 1-day spring symposium in the US for the initial meeting of the US and Japanese researchers, followed later in the year by a 10-day visit to several Japanese universities and research institutions. The Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) will sponsor the Japanese participants.
The participants in this exchange program are primarily at the assistant professor level, with the intention of fostering long-term, substantive collaborations amongst the scientific leaders of the next decade(s). In addition, the selection of US participants has resulted in a team that is over one-third female and represents a broad geographical distribution.
