May 1 2008
Organizers of the international nanotechnology event held each year in Dallas, Texas, announced that K. Eric Drexler will present his latest insights the second day of the event, Friday, October 3, when he speaks to a crowd of nanotech business interests at nanoTX USA’08, held this year at the Hyatt Regency Dallas convention hotel.
K. Eric Drexler
As a researcher and author, Drexler’s work focuses on advanced nanotechnologies and directions for current research. His 1981 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences established fundamental principles of molecular design, protein engineering, and productive nanosystems.
Much of what Drexler saw coming is being realized today, indeed he worked to create it. This field has been his basis for numerous journal articles and books, including Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology (written for a general audience) and Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation (a quantitative, physics-based analysis). And Drexler helped lead development of the 2007 Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems, a project managed by Battelle and hosted by several of the U.S. National Laboratories.
Drexler was awarded a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Molecular Nanotechnology (the first degree of its kind). Dr. Drexler serves as Chief Technical Advisor to Nanorex, a company developing open-source design software for structural DNA nanotechnologies. He consults and speaks on how current research can be directed more effectively toward high-payoff objectives, and addresses the implications of emerging technologies for our future, including their use to solve, rather than delay, large-scale problems such as global warming.
Other top minds at this year’s conference include people like Stan Ovshinsky, world-famed pioneer in nanostructures, who was once named Time Magazine’s “Hero of the Planet.” Ovshinsky has become a living legend in the scientific and business communities, having once been profiled in a one-hour PBS program on NOVA entitled “Japan’s American Genius.” The most recent exciting advancement is his solid hydrogen storage system, a metal hydride solid which can be stored in a granular, inert form in compact tanks.
Also speaking is scientist/businessman William Kroll, chairman of Matheson Tri-Gas and who served on the Commission of Outsourcing and Off-shoring for the governor of New Jersey; Mark Hakey, manager of IBM's Process Integration team at Albany Nanotech); Dr. Zvi Yaniv of Applied Nanotech; Monsanto’s Dr. Pradip Das; and Dr. Ray Baughman, Director of the Nanotech Institute at UTD.