Foresight Institute, the original organization in the nanotechnology field, founded in 1986, announced today that it has updated its mission and focus. The organization has also renamed itself Foresight Nanotech Institute to reflect these changes.
"As Foresight approaches its twentieth year, it has largely succeeded in its original mission of educating policy makers, professionals and the general public about the potential of nanotechnology," said Foresight President Scott Mize, "Now that the nanotechnology field is rapidly developing, we have turned our attention towards a new mission: ensuring the beneficial implementation of nanotechnology. We added the word 'nanotech' to our name to clearly communicate our focus to newcomers to the field."
As part of its new mission, Foresight has articulated the six critical challenges that humanity faces which can be addressed by nanotechnology. Foresight believes that investing resources in developing solutions to these challenges will have the largest payoff for humanity.
The Foresight Nanotechnology Challenges are:
- Meeting global energy needs with clean solutions
- Providing abundant clean water globally
- Increasing the health and longevity of human life
- Maximizing the productivity of agriculture
- Making powerful information technology available everywhere
- Enabling the development of space
"The Foresight Nanotechnology Challenges are the key organizing principles for us. We will dedicate our organization to catalyzing and promoting the solutions to these challenges," continued Mize. "In the past, Foresight concentrated primarily on the long-term vision and potential of nanotechnology, while carefully identifying the risks inherent in such a powerful technology. While we will continue this work, we will concentrate more on near- and medium-term applications in the Foresight Nanotechnology Challenge areas, and what can be done today to put us on the pathway to realizing the full potential of nanotechnology.
“This new focus will enable Foresight to create alliances with broader and more diverse groups of stakeholders than ever before to achieve our goals. We welcome all individuals and organizations that want to work with us on the Foresight Nanotechnology Challenges to contact us with their ideas and proposals. We also encourage them to join us in our efforts by becoming members of Foresight.”
As part of this new direction, Foresight launched a new Web site today at http://www.foresight.org. The non-profit will also expand its current activities of publishing informative web content, books, newsletters, public policy papers, guidelines, news digests; awarding prizes; holding educational and networking events; and educating governments, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, environmental groups, the policy community, professional associations and the general public about the benefits and risks of nanotechnology.
http://www.foresight.org
Posted 24th May 2005
