Israeli-Georgia Nanotech Collaboration

The folks in Georgia are playing their ED hand well internationally. They have built collaborative ties with Israeli scientists and companies to advance nanotech development in both Georgia and Israel. I like the sound of this joint approach. It's all about building the national and global networks to connect to new opportunities.

Israeli expertise in nanotechnology is making international waves - reaching all the way to the southern part of the United States.

In Georgia, local scientists together with several major technical institutes in Israel are combining state funding and brainpower to create a nanotechnology research center.

Nanotechnology, the creation and use of the very smallest of particles, is on the cutting edge of science, and is expected to help mankind discover cancer at very early stages, improve detection of dangerous gases and aid in repairing gene damage.

Now the state of Georgia, together with Georgia Tech University is investing $81 million to go toward the construction and operation of a world-class nanotechnology research center. With a projected operating date of 2007, the 160,000-square-foot facility will feature 30,000 square feet of clean rooms necessary for the manipulation of individual atoms and molecules. The center would be the most advanced nanotechnology facility in the Southeast, on par with similar facilities planned or under construction at MIT, Cornell, Stanford, and the University of California at Berkeley.

Last month, four of the school's top officials traveled to Israel for weeklong meetings with their peers at four Israeli universities - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa; the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot; and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba. Their goal was to establish faculty exchange and dual-degree programs that will enhance research efforts on both sides of the globe.

"We want to make Georgia the hub of nanotechnology in the United States," and "we want to make Israel the center of nanotechnology in the Middle East," Aviv Ezra, Israel's deputy consul for the Southeast, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

The cooperative effort got off the ground after a conversation between former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres and Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue in May 2003. Later last year, Peres publicly called upon Israel and North American communities to invest in nanotechnology and to support the Israel Nanotechnology Trust, established by the government of Israel to secure funding for Israeli scientists working in the field.

More here.