Cientifica has a new white paper, Nanotechnology Funding in 2009, that provides an international overview of government funding for nanotechnology. There’s more information about the white paper here and Cientifica’s white paper is here. Briefly, government spending is slowing down in response to a growing maturity, i.e. nanotechnology innovations are moving out of the laboratories and into production. $40B has been invested over the last five years. From Nanowerk News,

Cientifica’s research has also reveals [sic] that the long-time leaders of nanotechnology funding, the United States and Japan, have now fallen to third and fourth behind the EU and Russia, with the US being tied with China for third.

It’s interesting that the current economic situation, according to Cientifica, is not having a major impact at this time.

I’m sure the folks at Nanotech BC (or what remains of it) would agree with Cientifica re: the slowdown in funding since they’ve had to effectively cease operation du to their failure to secure government funding. I don’t think they’d agree that it has nothing to do with the economic downturn.

And, it seems mildly ironic that Nanotech BC folks have produced a nanotechnology asset map for BC and were in the midst of developing one for Alberta when they had to yank the plug. The  irony lies in the fact that NanoKTN has just announced something similar to an asset map, a new online directory of nanotechnology enterprises for the UK. Clearly, they’re more willing to fund these types of organizations and projects in the UK.