Nanoscience and nanengineering ("nano") R&D is extraordinarily active and diverse and much of it conducted in the context of research centers. These are designed to facilitate effective research knowledge transfer which in turn depends on understanding mechanisms that facilitate cross-disciplinary networking and the integration of diverse fields of knowledge relevant to application. Research centers constitute a key strategy in the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI)to pool resources, facilitate interdisciplinary research and enable links with industry to accelerate technology transfer and industry applications of nanotechnology results (NSET 2007). Research centers play a role in acheiving all four goals of hte NNI strategic plan.
Need for Rapid: The stage in the program, with the NNI approaching a decade of existence, makes it extremely important to understand whether the vision for the field is unfolding as planned. Specifically, we need to know the ways in which research centers shape the direction of hte field both thematically, with other scientific and technological results, amnd materially, with their conditributions to education and infrastructure. In other words, how have you research centers actually performed the role assigned to them in the NNI and what has their contribution to the current state of affairs in nano been? The timing and criticality of the assessment information provide grounds for this RAPID proposal and also point to the broader impacts of this project. The project will focus only on the 15 NSECs that have had a long enough cycle of funding to show impacts and will not make specific recommendations related to funding individual centers. It will address the programmatic level for future center solicitations.
Intellectual Merit: Nano centers have produced outputs and outcomes over the period of their existence in the frame of the NNI, such as papers, reports, collaborations with other research teams and with industry, patents, citations, which have been tracked quantitatively. However, nano studies have not produced consensus on the mechanisms and profiles of centers in fostering interdisciplinarity, or how to integrate diverse fields needed to move toward viable applications, or how to bolster research knowledge diffusion or innovation, all of which underlie their outputs and are critical in understanding their contribution to the goals and objectives of the policy. We seek to advance the assessment of research centers' impacts and outcomes through a mixed methods approach that will connect the bibliometric, statistical, quantitative characterization of center activity with an in-depth, qualitative analysis. The approach will be an explanatory sequential design that seeks to enhance the interpretation of the results of a qualitative study with in-depth, focused qualitative research.
The point of departure will be the quantitative information on outputs and outcomes available from outgoing tracking of center activity, previous reports and evaluations of NNI programs, NNI data from FY2001 to FY2009, as available, and indicators of interdisciplinarity and integration of knowledge derived from the published record available in multiple publication and patent databases. Current nano R&D entails all stages form fundamental research through commerical innovation. Consequently, cross-sector (academic-government-industry "triple helix") interactions are important and intended by design in the NNI strategic plan. Integration of research knowlege across nano specialties is vital, and we simultaneously attend to convergence of nano with bio, cognitive, and information sciences. Centers seek to facilitate integration of both intellectual and social elements to spur knowledge generation and translate NNI happen through their implementation of the new mode of knowledge production. In this project, we address the critical need for a tailored design of the assessment of their outcomes and impacts in this new field. NOTE: This project does not include the ASU Center for Nanotechnology and Society nor any NSEC addressing societal implications.
