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The construction of the building for the California NanoSystems Institute won’t be completed until around May 2005, but collaborative efforts between institute members are already well underway.

Nanotechnology – working with materials at this miniscule atomic and molecular level – can influence everything from agriculture to the aerospace industry. Such a broad span of influence will stem from the unprecedented teamwork of researchers from all areas of science.

“That’s the most remarkable part of this nano revolution: bringing together people of different backgrounds and watching them collaborate and do something they probably would not or could not do” said J. Fraser Stoddart, director of the institute and professor of chemistry at UCLA.

The CNSI hopes to foster an environment for the 26 faculty members – hailing from departments in the College of Letters & Science, the Henry Samueli School of Engineering, and the David Geffen School of Medicine – to communicate.

An example of such a venue is the UCLA NanoSystems Seminar Series. As many as 250 researchers from UCLA and other institutions have attended these seminars given by influential guest scientists in the nanotech field.

A reception in which attendees can mix, mingle and exchange ideas follows the seminars.

“Collaboration occurs spontaneously,” Stoddart said. “With the fact that the membership exists, (members) have come to know each other through formal and informal meetings.”

And when faculty begin to set up a network across the academic departments, Stoddart added, their students are soon to follow.

A group of graduate students has formed the CNSI Young Investigators Society, which puts out a quarterly publication, “Spheres,” featuring reviews on each of the seminars and includes profiles of the speakers making presentations.

The CNSI also hopes to extend an outreach program to high school students, encouraging them to attend seminars and lectures.

Once the building is completed, faculty from UCLA and other institutes with a background in any discipline can use the facilities with permission and a paid fee.

“We want to use (the Institute) as a carrot to entice some of the very best people in the world to come to UCLA,” Stoddart said.

“You’ve got to get the most creative and talented people brought together in a big enough grouping to create something that won’t just be magic.”

For example, Stoddart has collaborated with mechanical engineers to develop tiny machines that can perform functions similar to a desktops computer’s fundamental actions. But instead of electrical parts, the components of these small devices are molecules that can switch on and off in a motion similar to that of a sliding abacus bead. When enough of these switches are placed together, one can create the molecular equivalent of electronic memory used for data storage.

Jeffrey Miller, professor and chairman of the Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics Department, also studies what he calls “nanomachines” which are similar to the tiny mechanisms used by viruses to inject proteins and genetic material into infected cells.

With an understanding of how these so-called “molecular syringes” are engineered, a better understanding can be obtained of how the physiological processes of a cell are manipulated.

“The CNSI is an opportunity to change the way we do science and facilitate interactions between disciplines that need to interact but might not otherwise,” Miller said.

The members of CNSI emphasize the importance of a collaborative scientific team over the physical building itself.

“It’s not just about the building,” Miller said. “It’s the associations that we’re forming right now which are also extremely valuable.”

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