Majority Statement

• Ted Stevens

  Senator
  Read statement

  Majority Statement

  Ted Stevens

  Senator Stevens:  I have two short but stupid questions. Is your headquarters in Illinois ?

   

  Mr. Murdoch: Yes it is.

   

  Senator Stevens: How did that happen? That’s not a normal place for a national center is what I’m saying.

   

  Mr. Murdoch: Well, it happened from a few things. One, I’m based in Illinois and I have been…I grew up in the Chicagoland area.

   

  Senator Stevens: Did you name yourself the center or do you really have a lot of members?

   

  Mr. Murdoch: No there’s a lot. The Alliance is a national organization so we have members all over the country, but there is quite a lot of capability in the Chicagoland area.

   

  Senator Stevens: The second, not so stupid, question is: we’re working in this Committee on trying to deal with the problem outlined by the report that shows us, The Rising and Gathering Storm, the decline in the production of graduate students in science, technology and engineering. Having this separate Nano division now, is that producing competition in the numbers we are producing. After all, it looks like China and India are producing 1.1 engineers while we’re producing 70,000, that doesn’t sounds like there’s a lot of engineers working in Nanotechnology. Are we splitting our forces too much?

   

  Mr. Murdoch:  I think that having to be focused on nanotechnology is actually quite powerful. As we talk about some of these grand challenges of clean, renewable energy, or high-powered computing, etc., it serves to motivate the children and the younger students to think about how this will tangibly affect their world. And at least from the people I’ve interacted with at the grade school and the high school levels its getting excitement where they’re going to consider going into the engineering disciplines. But I think we need to have, not just what I would consider a push strategy which is throw more money in the educational infrastructure, but a pull strategy where they start to see that there are going to be good, high paying, dynamic, fun, exciting jobs that will change the world through the commercialization of nanotechnology and then we will get more people going into the engineering disciplines.

   

  Senator Stevens: Did you participate in the Augustine Report?

   

  Mr. Murdoch: I’m sorry?

   

  Senator Stevens: Did you participate in the Augustine Study and Report?

   

  Mr. Murdoch: No I did not.

   

Testimony

• Mr. Sean Murdoch

  Executive Director

  NanoBusiness Alliance
  Read statement

  Testimony

  Mr. Sean Murdoch

  Click here for a copy of Mr. Murdoch's testimony

• Robert D. "Skip" Rung

  President and Executive Director

  Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute
  Read statement

  Testimony

  Robert D. "Skip" Rung

  Click here for a copy of Mr. Rung's testimony

• Dr. Philip Boudjouk

  Vice President for Research

  Creative Activities and Technology Transfer, North Dakota State University
  Read statement

  Testimony

  Dr. Philip Boudjouk

  Click for a copy of Dr. Boudjouk's testimony

• Mr. Jerry Gwaltney

  City Manager

  City of Danville, VA
  Read statement

  Testimony

  Mr. Jerry Gwaltney

  Click here for a copy of Mr. Gwaltney's testimony