Nanos may give Triad big boost

BYLINE: JASON HARDIN

DATELINE: GREENSBORO

GREENSBORO - A planned school of nanotechnology at N.C. A&T and UNCG has the potential to help transform the Triad's economy, boosters say.

The school would be operated jointly by the two universities and would be built near East Lee Street and Interstate 40/85.

The project is contingent on receiving funding from the General Assembly, and area leaders say they will push hard for it .

"If we're going to transform the economy, we've got to do so with some high-level kinds of things, and this represents that kind of opportunity," said Skip Moore, a member of UNCG's board of trustees who is active in economic development in the area.

Nanotechnology - which involves working with almost impossibly tiny particles - is increasingly used in consumer goods and other products.

Materials that act one way in their typical form sometimes have different properties when broken into tiny bits, and nanomaterials have been touted in a range of applications.

According to materials given out during a UNCG board of trustees meeting earlier this month, the nanotech school would offer doctoral degrees and would have departments of nanoscience and nanoengineering.

The curriculum could include research processes such as fluorescence correlation spectroscopy and two-photon excitation techniques.

Research topics could include products such as tiny biofuel cells that could power a range of devices and probes that could gather information about the body at the cellular level.

Big-time nanotech scholars would be recruited to staff the school, and the first students would be admitted in 2008.

The universities are looking for, among other things, $58 million from the General Assembly to build and equip a new building. A&T already receives millions each year for nanotech research.

The economic benefits of the school could be substantial, supporters say.

"It represents the type of innovative, collaborative thinking necessary to move the Piedmont Triad from a manufacturing-based to a knowledge-based economy," the handout states.

The school would serve as "an engine for educational and economic development" and help put the area on the cutting edge of science and engineering.

Moore said the school could help offset the job losses the area has suffered in traditional industries.

The area has added service jobs but needs more high-wage jobs, he said.

In and of itself, the school would mean new jobs, but the ripple effects it could have in attracting and generating new companies would be even better, he said.

Greensboro might not ever become a financial center like Charlotte, but is a good place to do business, and the school could be a big part of that, Moore said.

"We can build up a pretty good kind of economy," he said.

Contact Jason Hardin at 373-7021 or jhardin @news-record.com

nA nanotechnology school could help move the area to a knowledge-based economy.