NIRT: From Laboratory to Society: Developing an Informed Approach to Nanoscale Science and Technology
Project Information
| Principal Investigator | Davis Baird |
| Institution | University of South Carolina |
| Project URL | View |
| Relevance to Implications | Some |
| Class of Nanomaterial | Engineered Nanomaterials |
| Impact Sector | Cross-cutting |
| Broad Research Categories |
Risk Management |
| NNI identifier |
Funding Information
| Country | USA |
| Anticipated Total Funding | $1,350,000.00 |
| Annual Funding | $337,500.00 |
| Funding Source | NSF |
| Funding Mechanism | Extramural |
| Funding Sector | Government |
| Start Year | 2003 |
| Anticipated End Year | 2007 |
Abstract/Summary
Nanoscale science and engineering presents new challenges and opportunities not only to the scientific research community but also to all those who shape its public understanding. This interdisciplinary research team has two objectives: to create a variety of opportunities for a broadly inclusive interdisciplinary dialog on nanoscale science and technology and, within this model, to pursue a collection of four research projects each aimed at establishing an informed understanding of nanoscale science and technology.
Literary and artistic speculation has typically run ahead of scientific developments, while philosophical interpretation has lagged behind, awaiting theoretically mature science. Also, while popular perception has been influenced by the rhetoric of promise and fear, the quantitative science of risk assessment has brought its specialized tools only to specific and well- understood technologies. In contrast, in this project public understanding will co-evolve alongside the emerging field of nanoscale science and technology. Here lies both the intellectual merit of this project, and its promise for broad social impact.
The team’s first objective is to establish an integrated and participatory model for the facilitation of public understanding of nanoscale science and technology. It starts by engaging the faculty members of USC’s recently established NanoCenter. As the investigators explore the properties of the nanoscale, a larger academic and non-academic public will participate in their discussions. Through workshops, colloquia, conferences, publications, courses, etc. this interdisciplinary research team will join in dialog bench scientists, humanities and legal scholars, students, and citizens.
The pursuit of the first objective allows for the achievement of the second objective. This research team focuses on the concepts of understanding and control. The investigators examine these concepts in four research areas that bring understanding and control of nanotechnology out from the laboratory, first to a wider audience within the university, and then to its ultimate integration into society. The first area of research is concerned with understanding and control in the experimental and theoretical grasp of nanoscale phenomena. The second is concerned with one of the primary means by which understanding and control is expressed and maintained: the visualization and conceptualization of the nanoscale. The team examines how visualization and control are accomplished in science and engineering and in the imaginative contributions of art and science fiction, through which understanding and control is carried to nanotechnology’s wider public. The third research area focuses on the particular issue of risks tied to cascading effects, exploring analogies with genetic engineering. Failing to address such risks represents a degradation of our understanding and control, and this loss will ramify in societal perception and potential rejection of these technologies. The fourth research area focuses on communication about nanoscale science and technology as it engages the public at large, but also our legal and political systems. Informed and engaged communication between scientists and engineers and the wider public sphere is imperative if a broad-based informed understanding is to guide democratic deliberation over the control of nanoscale research and technology.
This Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Team (NIRT) proposal was submitted in response to the solicitation “Nanoscale Science and Engineering” (NSF 02-148). It is being supported by the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE), the Directorate for Engineering (ENG), and the Division of Materials Research in the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS).
