| Q&A with Dave Bishop, vice president of Nanotechnology Research at Bell Labs, and president of the New Jersey Nanotechnology Consortium January 19, 2004 ? The New Jersey Nanotechnology Consortium (NJNC), based at Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs, was formed with the support of the State of New Jersey to conduct research, develop and prototype devices, and stimulate and commercialize new business concepts in nanotechnology. The NJNC's multidisciplinary approach and state-of-the-art capabilities allow it to develop everything from designer molecules and miniaturized chips to microscopic medical devices and advanced sensor networks. Following is a Q&A with Dave Bishop, the vice president of Nanotechnology Research at Bell Labs, who also serves as the president of the NJNC. Q: What is the NJNC's charter? A: First, we'd like to build a business out of nanotechnology with Bell Labs science and technology driving it forward. Our charter is extremely broad in the sense that we're free to explore the best near-term opportunities for nanotechnology in a wide range of areas. We hope to develop significant market opportunities for nanotechnology in a wide range of application areas. Certainly we're pursuing any good opportunities we can in telecom, which includes photonics and wireless applications. But the charter of the NJNC is not restricted to telecom. We're also very aggressively going after applications in pharmaceuticals, medical devices, health care, defense, consumer products, and in the environmental, aeronautical, and automotive industries. Q: What exactly is nanotechnology? A: Nanotechnology deals with things whose length scale is bigger than an atom but smaller than a human red blood cell. The typical human red blood cell is about 10 microns in diameter ? that's a tenth of the diameter of a human hair. Human beings are a good example of what you can do with nanotechnology. A lot of the fundamental things that make us human ? everything from intelligence to energy transfer ? function at that level between molecules and cells. That's because nature has figured out how to manipulate and produce interesting structures at the nanoscale ? everything from neurons that let us smell and see to molecules that let us convert food into energy. Nanotechnology is about trying to figure out how to do some of those things ourselves. Nature and biology do a very good job of manipulating matter at the nanoscale to create miracles, and we'd like to have some of those miracles under engineering control. Q: What is the NJNC's relationship to Bell Labs? A: One of the biggest benefits for our customers is that we can also pair nanotechnology with other Bell Labs technologies. This lets us offer a wider palate of solutions to our customers. The nanotechnology is still the key, but the other things really make it a complete solution. By combining our world-class nanotechnology facilities with Bell Labs-developed technology and Lucent's broad line of products and services, we can offer our customers everything from a designer molecule to a multi-thousand kilometer, intercontinental network, and everything in between. The customers are very much resonating with that. Q: The original plan for the NJNC was that it would be a consortium through which we would work with scientists from outside of Lucent. What is the model now? A: We are continuing to do work with scientists from New Jersey state-funded universities. Their participation is being paid for by a seed grant from the Economic Development Agency of New Jersey, and it's a model that's working well. Q: What is the benefit of this kind of technology to the average person? A: With nanotechnology, you can do things artificially that are very, very interesting. Computers, for example, are becoming so small you don't know within a factor of 10 how many you own. Ninety percent of the computers we own are computers we don't even know about. They are quietly working, letting us focus on the business of our lives. For example, when you drive your car, the last thing you want to do is worry about the exhaust manifold pressure. The car is going to take care of that. You want computers that adapt to and learn from your behavior. If you typically get up at 6 a.m. and go to bed at about 10 p.m., you want a computer that figures out on its own when to turn the heat up and turn it down. You want to live in a world where all that stuff takes place for you. Nanotechnology is moving us in the direction where we'll be able to have computers take over these mundane functions so that human beings will to be free to focus on more value added activities. Q: What are some other applications? A: There's a lot of work going on in sensors ? sensors that hear and feel and smell and see, sensors that detect vibration or chemicals. There's work on various kinds of radio frequency components, to build a radio on a chip. If you had a radio the size of a button that cost you all of five cents, then you could put radios everywhere. You could put a radio on your dog, on your kid, or on the book you've lent to your buddy so that you know where it is.  There are also opportunities to create microscopic devices to repair human beings ? everything from implantable ears and eyes to devices that go inside blood vessels to make repairs or remove clots. We are, for example, developing very sensitive sensors you can put on catheters and place inside people's hearts to measure mechanical properties of the heart. Nature can build things that are very small that can get energy from their environment and move around, such as bacteria or viruses. Someday, maybe 50 to 100 years out, we may build artificially created nanodevices that can do things like that. You'd use these nanodevices to clean up a polluted river, for example, or as targeted antibodies to fight disease in the body. All of those things are physically possible. Nature does it: we just have to figure out how to do it ourselves. At NJNC, we're focusing on many of these things. We're focusing on near-term commercial opportunities, but we're also aware that we're taking the first baby steps of what will be a long journey. It's a very exciting area to work in. | 
