Tag Archives: US National Nanotechnology Initiative

Public comment invited on *2016* US draft National Nanotechnology Initiative strategic plan

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A Sept. 23, 2016 news item on Nanowerk announces a public consultation on the latest draft US National Nanotechnology Initiative strategic plan (Note: Links have been removed),

The draft 2016 National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) Strategic Plan is now available online for public comment prior to publication. The public is encouraged to submit comments electronically through www.nano.gov/2016strategy, or via email to 2016NNIStrategy@nnco.nano.gov. Public comments should be one page or less and include reference page and line numbers. Comments are due by September 23, 2016. Additional guidance is available in the Federal Register.

The NNI Strategic Plan describes the initiative’s vision and goals and the strategies by which these goals are to be achieved. The plan includes a description of the NNI investment strategy and the program component areas called for by the 21st Century Research and Development Act of 2003, and it also identifies specific objectives toward collectively achieving the NNI vision. This plan updates and replaces the NNI Strategic Plan of February 2014.

A Sept. 12, 2016 US National Nanotechnology Initiative notice provides a link to the 67pp. draft document and further information. You can also check the US Federal Register for the official document. The deadline for submitting comments is Sept. 23, 2016, in short, you have ten days.

*ETA Sept. 15, 2016: Sam Pearson in a Sept. 14, 2016 article (open access during a free trial) for Bloomberg BNA offers some analysis of the 2016 draft plan,

The draft document, which sets out goals for developing and commercializing the technology and was released Sept. 12 [2016], is largely unchanged from previous versions. The plan, which is required under the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act, sets policy for the White House-led National Nanotechnology Initiative for the next three years across 20 departments and independent agencies.

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The environment and health spending is about 7 percent of the initiative’s total budget, an increase from 4.8 percent in fiscal year 2011 and just 2.8 percent in fiscal year 2006. When combined with related spending in other sectors, the total is about 10 percent of the budget, the document states.

“There’s significant potential positive aspects of this, but we need those to be managed in a mature way to ensure that we’re not bringing about something that’s so profound without any laws in place,” Ian Illuminato, a health and environment consultant at Friends of the Earth, told Bloomberg BNA Sept. 12 [2016], “which has so far been what’s happening.”

Friends of the Earth and other environmental groups have pushed for tougher evaluations of the potential health risks of nanotech products.

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In a statement to Bloomberg BNA Sept. 12 [2016], Jay West, head of the Nanotechnology Panel of the American Chemistry Council, said the group planned to examine the proposal.

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For the curious, there’s more analysis in Pearson’s article.

*’2016′ added on Sept. 15, 2016.

US white paper on neuromorphic computing (or the nanotechnology-inspired Grand Challenge for future computing)

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The US has embarked on a number of what is called “Grand Challenges.” I first came across the concept when reading about the Bill and Melinda Gates (of Microsoft fame) Foundation. I gather these challenges are intended to provide funding for research that advances bold visions.

There is the US National Strategic Computing Initiative established on July 29, 2015 and its first anniversary results were announced one year to the day later. Within that initiative a nanotechnology-inspired Grand Challenge for Future Computing was issued and, according to a July 29, 2016 news item on Nanowerk, a white paper on the topic has been issued (Note: A link has been removed),

Today [July 29, 2016), Federal agencies participating in the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) released a white paper (pdf) describing the collective Federal vision for the emerging and innovative solutions needed to realize the Nanotechnology-Inspired Grand Challenge for Future Computing.

The grand challenge, announced on October 20, 2015, is to “create a new type of computer that can proactively interpret and learn from data, solve unfamiliar problems using what it has learned, and operate with the energy efficiency of the human brain.” The white paper describes the technical priorities shared by the agencies, highlights the challenges and opportunities associated with these priorities, and presents a guiding vision for the research and development (R&D) needed to achieve key technical goals. By coordinating and collaborating across multiple levels of government, industry, academia, and nonprofit organizations, the nanotechnology and computer science communities can look beyond the decades-old approach to computing based on the von Neumann architecture and chart a new path that will continue the rapid pace of innovation beyond the next decade.

A July 29, 2016 US National Nanotechnology Coordination Office news release, which originated the news item, further and succinctly describes the contents of the paper,

“Materials and devices for computing have been and will continue to be a key application domain in the field of nanotechnology. As evident by the R&D topics highlighted in the white paper, this challenge will require the convergence of nanotechnology, neuroscience, and computer science to create a whole new paradigm for low-power computing with revolutionary, brain-like capabilities,” said Dr. Michael Meador, Director of the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office. …

The white paper was produced as a collaboration by technical staff at the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Intelligence Community. …

The white paper titled “A Federal Vision for Future Computing: A Nanotechnology-Inspired Grand Challenge” is 15 pp. and it offers tidbits such as this (Note: Footnotes not included),

A new materials base may be needed for future electronic hardware. While most of today’s electronics use silicon, this approach is unsustainable if billions of disposable and short-lived sensor nodes are needed for the coming Internet-of-Things (IoT). To what extent can the materials base for the implementation of future information technology (IT) components and systems support sustainability through recycling and bio-degradability? More sustainable materials, such as compostable or biodegradable systems (polymers, paper, etc.) that can be recycled or reused,  may play an important role. The potential role for such alternative materials in the fabrication of integrated systems needs to be explored as well. [p. 5]

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The basic architecture of computers today is essentially the same as those built in the 1940s—the von Neumann architecture—with separate compute, high-speed memory, and high-density storage components that are electronically interconnected. However, it is well known that continued performance increases using this architecture are not feasible in the long term, with power density constraints being one of the fundamental roadblocks.7 Further advances in the current approach using multiple cores, chip multiprocessors, and associated architectures are plagued by challenges in software and programming models. Thus,  research and development is required in radically new and different computing architectures involving processors, memory, input-output devices, and how they behave and are interconnected. [p. 7]

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Neuroscience research suggests that the brain is a complex, high-performance computing system with low energy consumption and incredible parallelism. A highly plastic and flexible organ, the human brain is able to grow new neurons, synapses, and connections to cope with an ever-changing environment. Energy efficiency, growth, and flexibility occur at all scales, from molecular to cellular, and allow the brain, from early to late stage, to never stop learning and to act with proactive intelligence in both familiar and novel situations. Understanding how these mechanisms work and cooperate within and across scales has the potential to offer tremendous technical insights and novel engineering frameworks for materials, devices, and systems seeking to perform efficient and autonomous computing. This research focus area is the most synergistic with the national BRAIN Initiative. However, unlike the BRAIN Initiative, where the goal is to map the network connectivity of the brain, the objective here is to understand the nature, methods, and mechanisms for computation,  and how the brain performs some of its tasks. Even within this broad paradigm,  one can loosely distinguish between neuromorphic computing and artificial neural network (ANN) approaches. The goal of neuromorphic computing is oriented towards a hardware approach to reverse engineering the computational architecture of the brain. On the other hand, ANNs include algorithmic approaches arising from machinelearning,  which in turn could leverage advancements and understanding in neuroscience as well as novel cognitive, mathematical, and statistical techniques. Indeed, the ultimate intelligent systems may as well be the result of merging existing ANN (e.g., deep learning) and bio-inspired techniques. [p. 8]

As government documents go, this is quite readable.

For anyone interested in learning more about the future federal plans for computing in the US, there is a July 29, 2016 posting on the White House blog celebrating the first year of the US National Strategic Computing Initiative Strategic Plan (29 pp. PDF; awkward but that is the title).

UK and US issue documents nanomaterial safety to support safe work with nanomaterials

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I am featuring two bits of information about nanosafety first from the UK and then from the US.

UK and nanosafety

A May 30, 2016 news item on Nanowerk announces a not particularly exciting but necessary report on handling nanomaterials safely (Note: A link has been removed),

The UK Nanosafety Group (UKNSG) has updated and published a 2nd edition of guidance (pdf) to support safe and responsible working practices with nanomaterials in research and development laboratories.

A May 25, 2016 UK Nanosafety Group press release, which originated the news item, provides more detail,

The document aims to provide guidance on factors relating to establishing a safe workplace and good safety practice when working with particulate nanomaterials. It is applicable to a wide range of nanomaterials, including particles, fibres, powders, tubes and wires as well as aggregates and agglomerates, and recognises previous and current uncertainty in developing effective risk management when dealing with nanomaterials and advocates a precautionary strategy to minimise potential exposure.

The 2nd edition of the guidance provides updates to account for changes in legislation, recent studies in the literature, and best practice since 2012. In particular, specific sections have been revised to account for the full implementation of Global Harmonised System (GHS) which came into force on 1 June 2015 through the CLP [Classification, Labelling and Packaging] regulations. The document explains the approaches that are presently being used to select effective control measures for the management of nanomaterials, more specifically control banding tools presently in use. Significant changes can be found in the following sections: ‘Hazard Banding’, ‘Exposure Control’, ‘Toxicology’, and ‘Monitoring’.

Of relevance to employers, managers, health and safety advisors, and users of particulate nanomaterials in research and development, the guidance should be read in conjunction with the Approved Code of Practice on COSHH [Control of Substances Hazardous to Health], together with the other literature referred to in the document. The document has been produced taking account of the safety information currently available and is presented in the format of guidance and recommendations to support implementation of suitable protocols and control measures by employers and employees. It is intended that the document will be reviewed and updated on a periodic basis to keep abreast of the evolving nature of the content.

The guidance titled “Working Safely with Nanomaterials in Research & Development” is about 48 pp. and can be found here.

Tidbit about US nano environmental, health, and safety

Sylvia Palmer has written a May 27, 2016 update for ChemicalWatch on reports about or including information about environmental, health, and safety measures being taken in the US,

Three reports released recently by the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) highlight the US government’ investments and initiatives in nanotechnology. They also detail current progress and the need for further understanding of exposure to nanomaterials in consumer products –and how companies can protect their nanotechnology workforce.

NNI’s Quantifying exposure to engineered nanomaterials (QEEN) from manufactured products: addressing environmental, health, and safety implications notes significant progress has been made in the ability to quantify nanomaterial exposures. However, it says greater understanding of exposure risks in “real-world” scenarios is needed. Alternative testing models and high-throughput methods for rapidly estimating exposures will be further explored, it adds.

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You can find the report, Quantifying exposure to engineered nanomaterials (QEEN) from manufactured products: addressing environmental, health, and safety implications, here. Palmer’s article briefly describes the other two reports which contain information about US nano environmental, health, and safety efforts.

There is more about the three reports in an April 11, 2016 posting by Lloyd Whitman (Assistant Director for Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy) and Treye Thomas (leader of the Chemical Hazards Program team in the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, and Coordinator for Environmental, Health, and Safety Research under the National Nanotechnology Initiative) on the White House blog,

The recently released NNI Supplement to the President’s Budget for Fiscal Year 2017, which serves as the annual report for the NNI, highlights the programs and coordinated activities taking place across the many departments, independent agencies, and commissions participating today in the NNI—an initiative that continues to serve as a model for effective coordination of Federal science and technology R&D. As detailed in this report, nanoEHS activities continue to account for about 10 percent of the annual NNI budget, with cumulative Federal R&D investments in this area exceeding $1 billion over the past decade. This report includes descriptions of a wide variety of individual agency and coordinated activities supporting the responsible development of nanotechnology.

To understand and control the risks of using any new materials in consumer products, it is important to understand the potential for exposure and any associated hazards across product life cycles. Last month, the NNI released a report, Quantifying Exposure to Engineered Nanomaterials (QEEN) from Manufactured Products: Addressing Environmental, Health, and Safety Implications, summarizing a workshop on this topic sponsored by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). The main goals of the workshop were to assess progress in developing tools and methods for quantifying exposure to engineered nanomaterials across the product life cycle, and to identify new research needed to advance exposure assessment for nanotechnology-enabled products. …

The technical experts who participated in CPSC’s workshop recommended that future work focus on the complex issue of determining biomarkers of exposure linked to disease, which will require substantive public–private collaboration, partnership, and knowledge sharing. Recognizing these needs, the President’s 2017 Budget request for CPSC includes funds for a new nanotechnology center led by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) to develop test methods and to quantify and characterize the presence, release, and mechanisms of consumer exposure to nanomaterials in consumer products. This cost-effective, interagency collaboration will enable CPSC—through NIEHS—to collect the needed data to inform the safety of nanotechnology in consumer products and allow CPSC to benefit from NIEHS’s scientific network and experience.

Managing EHS risks across a product’s lifecycle includes protecting the workers who manufacture those products. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has issued a series of documents providing guidance to this emerging industry, including the recently released publication Building a Safety Program to Protect the Nanotechnology Workforce: A Guide for Small to Medium-Sized Enterprises. This guide provides business owners with the tools necessary to develop and implement a written health and safety program to protect their employees.

Whitman also mentions a June 2016 international conference in the context of this news,

The responsible development of nanotechnology is a goal that the United States shares with many countries. The United States and the European Union are engaged in notable cooperation on this front. European and American scientists engaged in nanoEHS research convene annually for a joint workshop to identify areas of shared interest and mechanisms for collaboration to advance nanoEHS science. The 2016 joint workshop will be held on June 6–7, 2016 in Arlington, VA, and is free and open to the public. …

Vote for favourite EnvisioNano image ’til June 17, 2016

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A June 6, 2016 news item on Nanowerk announces the latest and last voting round of the semifinal judging for the 2016 EnvisioNano contest,

Members of the public are invited to vote for the best images in this round of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) EnvisioNano contest.

Now in its third round, this contest has drawn submissions from students at top labs and schools across the United States.

This round includes images such as this one (from the 3rd voting round of the EnvisioNano page),

Iron Honeycomb: Hexagonal close-packed assembly of iron oxide nanoparticles Credits: Vikas Nandwana Advisor: Vinayak Dravid Department of Materials Science and Engineering Northwestern University

Iron Honeycomb: Hexagonal close-packed assembly of iron oxide nanoparticles Credits: Vikas Nandwana Advisor: Vinayak Dravid Department of Materials Science and Engineering Northwestern University

Nandwana also provides this description of his image,

Description: The particles shown here are made of iron oxide, or rust – just like on a car. But these nanoparticles are tiny, 100,000 times thinner than a sheet of paper. At such a small size, they demonstrate some unique properties that can be used to detect and treat diseases like cancer by just applying external magnetic field without any side effects. Due to the same size and shape, the magnetic nanoparticles self-assemble (or come together) into a closely-packed honeycomb pattern.  Iron oxide nanoparticles like these are already used to help people suffering from iron deficiency (anemia). Researchers study how these magnetic nanoparticles interact with each other and tissues in the body, which can open new avenues for nontoxic, targeted tests and treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s and cardiovascular disease.
Laboratory website: http://vpd.ms.northwestern.edu/
Technique: Transmission Electron Microscopy
Funding Source: NTU-NU Institute for NanoMedicine located at the International Institute for Nanotechnology, Northwestern University, USA and the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

A June 6, 2016 US National Nanotechnology Initiative news release, which originated the news item, gives more details,

In the first two rounds of the EnvisioNano contest, student images racked up over 41,000 online views and both previous winning images were featured on the back cover of the NNI Supplement to the President’s 2017 Budget! We encourage everyone to cast votes for their favorite images. All students have provided a description of their photos and research, allowing the viewer to envision where the research is headed and to learn how seeing at the nanoscale is important to reaching that vision. So, as you view the pictures, take a moment to learn about the research and how nanotechnology may improve your life.

Voting starts Monday, June 6th, and is open until June 17th [2016].
View the images and cast your vote at: www.nano.gov/EnvisioNanoVoting.

Once this voting round is completed, judges from the NNI will select the final winning image.

There are a few more details about the contest on this Envisio Nano page. It may be of interest to note that voting ends at 12 pm (noon) on June 17, 2016.

2015 winners were featured (as mentioned earlier) on the cover of the 2017 NNI budget supplement. I wrote about the supplement and embedded images of the cover in my April 4, 2016 posting.

How many nanoparticle-based drugs does it take to kill a cancer tumour? More than 1%

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According to an April 27, 2016 news item on Nanowerk researchers at the University of Toronto (Canada) along with their collaborators in the US (Harvard Medical School) and Japan (University of Tokyo) have determined that less than 1% of nanoparticle-based drugs reach their intended destination (Note: A link has been removed),

Targeting cancer cells for destruction while leaving healthy cells alone — that has been the promise of the emerging field of cancer nanomedicine. But a new meta-analysis from U of T’s [University of Toronto] Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering (IBBME) indicates that progress so far has been limited and new strategies are needed if the promise is to become reality.

“The amount of research into using engineered nanoparticles to deliver cancer drugs directly to tumours has been growing steadily over the last decade, but there are very few formulations used in patients. The question is why?” says Professor Warren Chan (IBBME, ChemE, MSE), senior author on the review paper published in Nature Reviews Materials (“Analysis of nanoparticle delivery to tumours”). “We felt it was time to look at the field more closely.”

An April 25, 2016 U of T news release, which originated the news item, details the research,

Chan and his co-authors analysed 117 published papers that recorded the delivery efficiency of various nanoparticles to tumours — that is, the percentage of injected nanoparticles that actually reach their intended target. To their surprise, they found that the median value was about 0.7 per cent of injected nanoparticles reaching their targets, and that this number has not changed for the last ten years. “If the nanoparticles do not get delivered to the tumour, they cannot work as designed for many nanomedicines,” says Chan.

Even more surprising was that altering nanoparticles themselves made little difference in the net delivery efficiency. “Researchers have tried different materials and nanoparticle sizes, different surface coatings, different shapes, but all these variations lead to no difference, or only small differences,” says Stefan Wilhelm, a post-doctoral researcher in Chan’s lab and lead author of the paper. “These results suggest that we have to think more about the biology and the mechanisms that are involved in the delivery process rather than just changing characteristics of nanoparticles themselves.”

Wilhelm points out that nanoparticles do have some advantages. Unlike chemotherapy drugs which go everywhere in the body, drugs delivered by nanoparticles accumulate more in some organs and less in others. This can be beneficial: for example, one current treatment uses nanoparticles called liposomes to encapsulate the cancer drug doxorubicin.

This encapsulation reduces the accumulation of doxorubicin in the heart, thereby reducing cardiotoxicity compared with administering the drug on its own.

Unfortunately, the majority of injected nanoparticles, including liposomes, end up in the liver, spleen and kidneys, which is logical since the job of these organs is to clear foreign substances and poisons from the blood. This suggests that in order to prevent nanoparticles from being filtered out of the blood before they reach the target tumour, researchers may have to control the interactions of those organs with nanoparticles.

It may be that there is an optimal particle surface chemistry, size, or shape required to access each type of organ or tissue.  One strategy the authors are pursuing involves engineering nanoparticles that can dynamically respond to conditions in the body by altering their surfaces or other properties, much like proteins do in nature. This may help them to avoid being filtered out by organs such as the liver, but at the same time to have the optimal properties needed to enter tumors.

More generally, the authors argue that, in order to increase nanoparticle delivery efficiency, a systematic and coordinated long-term strategy is necessary. To build a strong foundation for the field of cancer nanomedicine, researchers will need to understand a lot more about the interactions between nanoparticles and the body’s various organs than they do today. To this end, Chan’s lab has developed techniques  to visualize these interactions across whole organs using 3D optical microscopy, a study published in ACS Nano this week.

In addition to this, the team has set up an open online database, called the Cancer Nanomedicine Repository that will enable the collection and analysis of data on nanoparticle delivery efficiency from any study, no matter where it is published. The team has already uploaded the data gathered for the latest paper, but when the database goes live in June, researchers from all over the world will be able to add their data and conduct real-time analysis for their particular area of interest.

“It is a big challenge to collect and find ways to summarize data from a decade of research but this article will be immensely useful to researchers in the field,” says Professor Julie Audet (IBBME), a collaborator on the study.

Wilhelm says there is a long way to go in order to improve the clinical translation of cancer nanomedicines, but he’s optimistic about the results. “From the first publication on liposomes in 1965 to when they were first approved for use in treating cancer, it took 30 years,” he says. “In 2016, we already have a lot of data, so there’s a chance that the translation of new cancer nanomedicines for clinical use could go much faster this time. Our meta-analysis provides a ‘reality’ check of the current state of cancer nanomedicine and identifies the specific areas of research that need to be investigated to ensure that there will be a rapid clinical translation of nanomedicine developments.”

I made time to read this paper,

Analysis of nanoparticle delivery to tumours by Stefan Wilhelm, Anthony J. Tavares, Qin Dai, Seiichi Ohta, Julie Audet, Harold F. Dvorak, & Warren C. W. Chan. Nature Reviews Materials 1, Article number: 16014 (2016  doi:10.1038/natrevmats.2016.14 Published online: 26 April 2016

It appears to be open access.

The paper is pretty accessible but it does require that you have some tolerance for your own ignorance (assuming you’re not an expert in this area) and time. If you have both, you will find a good description of the various pathways scientists believe nanoparticles take to enter a tumour. In short, they’re not quite sure how nanoparticles gain entry. As well, there are discussions of other problems associated with the field such as producing enough nanoparticles for general usage.

More than an analysis, there’s also a proposed plan for future action (from Analysis of nanoparticle delivery to tumours ),

UofT_30yrCancerMedicine

Current research in using nanoparticles in vivo has focused on innovative design and demonstration of utility of these nanosystems for imaging and treating cancer. The poor clinical translation has encouraged the researchers in the field to investigate the effect of nanoparticle design (for example, size, shape and surface chemistry) on its function and behaviour in the body in the past 10 years. From a cancer-targeting perspective, we do not believe that nanoparticles will be successfully translated to human use if the current ‘research paradigm’ of nanoparticle targeting continues because the delivery efficiency is too low. We propose a long-term strategy to increase the delivery efficiency and enable nanoparticles to be translated to patient care in a cost-effective manner from the research stage. A foundation for the field will be built by obtaining a detailed view of nanoparticle–organ interaction during nanoparticle transport to the tumour, using computational strategies to organize and simulate the results and the development of new tools to assess nanoparticle delivery. In addition, we propose that these results should be collected in a central database to allow progress in the field to be monitored and correlations to be established. A 30-year strategy was proposed and seemed to be a reasonable time frame because the first liposome system was reported in 1965 (Ref. 122) and the first liposome formulation (Doxil) was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1995 (Refs 91,92). This 30-year time frame may be shortened as a research foundation has already been established but only if the community can parse the immense amount of currently published data. NP, nanoparticle.

Another paper was mentioned in the news release,

Three-Dimensional Optical Mapping of Nanoparticle Distribution in Intact Tissues by Shrey Sindhwani, Abdullah Muhammad Syed, Stefan Wilhelm, Dylan R Glancy, Yih Yang Chen, Michael Dobosz, and Warren C.W. Chan.ACS Nano, Just Accepted Manuscript Publication Date (Web): April 21, 2016 DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.6b01879

Copyright © 2016 American Chemical Society

This paper is behind a paywall.

Finally, Melanie Ward in an April 26, 2016 article for Science News Hub has another approach to describing the research. Oddly, she states this,

However, the study warns about the lack of efficiency despite major economic investments (more than one billion dollars in the US in the past decade).

She’s right; the US has spent more than $1B in the last decade. In fact, they’ve allocated over $1B every year to the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) for almost two decades for a total of more than $20B. You might want to apply some caution when reading. BTW, I think that’s a wise approach for everything you read including the blog postings here.

NanoMech get $10M investment from Saudi company

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This news comes from the US state of Arkansas (not often featured here). The company, NanoMech, seems to be focused on lubricants and coatings according to an April 13, 2013 news release on Business Wire,

NanoMech announced today that it has secured $10 million in capital for leading its Series C Financing round from Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures (SAEV), the corporate venturing subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s national oil company. This capital infusion and relationship will significantly accelerate NanoMech’s manufacturing, sales and product development. NanoMech uses nanotechnology to develop advanced products for industrial and mechanical applications – such as lubricants, coatings and specialty chemicals. These products have enabled a step change in performance, efficiency and reliability in multiple industries such as energy, transportation, aerospace, manufacturing, automotive, agricultural equipment and military.

An April 11, 2013 NanoMech news release, which originated the item on Business Wire, provides a few more details and some quotes,

“NanoMech is honored to achieve this recognition and investment by the world’s largest energy company,” said NanoMech Chairman and CEO Jim Phillips. “Building on current momentum, NanoMech will use this financing and relationship to expand our global reach, invest in additional sales and marketing resources. We will also increase investment in our market-leading nanotechnology platforms, nGlide, GuardX, TuffTek, and nGuard.”

This capital infusion and relationship will significantly improve NanoMech’s manufacturing, sales and product development. Today’s announcement represents NanoMech’s most significant milestone in the continued validation and authentication of its unique technology.

“Response to NanoMech’s technology at Saudi Aramco and several of our major suppliers has been very positive,” said Cory Steffek, Managing Director, North America for SAEV. “A platform technology like NanoMech’s has significant potential to bring innovation, not only to the energy sector, but also to many other critical industries.”

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NanoMech has validated and commercialized its innovations to iconic world-leading businesses and has completed an upgrade of its smart factory and labs. Several Fortune 100 and emerging companies have incorporated NanoMech’s nano-engineered solutions to create high-performance products.

“After more than a decade of extensive research and development, and recent large-scale commercialization successes,” said Dr. Ajay P. Malshe, CTO and Founder of NanoMech. “Our industry is leading disruptive nanoscience and is light years ahead of the competition. We are transforming entire industries.

The big talk is rooted not just in hype but also in a major US government push to commercialize nanotechnology research, which has received billions of dollars in government funding (from the NanoMech news release),

“Aramco’s strategic investment in NanoMech will transform the productivity paradigm for sustainable global energy production,” said Deborah Wince-Smith, CEO of the U.S. Council on Competitiveness and NanoMech board member. “It will accelerate NanoMech’s position as the global leader in advanced nanotechnology.”