NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Grantees Conference, Dec 7-9, 2009

Grant # : 0531184

NANO HIGHLIGHT

Exploring Institutions of Interdisciplinarity

NSF NSEC Grant 0531184

PIs: Barbara Herr Harthorn, Rich Appelbaum, Bruce Bimber,

W. Patrick McCray, Christopher Newfield

University of California, Santa Barbara

This on-going project of the Center for Nanotechnology in Society UCSB IRG 1 (McCray)focuses on the history of interdisciplinary centers in the United States and their role in the history of nanotechnology starting in the late 1950s. Interdisciplinary academic institutions form the backbone of the US government’s involvement in nanotechnology. The present configuration of nanotechnology can only be understood in the context of a long history of attempts to stimulate academic interdisciplinarity by federal agencies (and, before that, by philanthropic foundations). The ultimate aim of the project will be a better, more historicized assessment of how interdisciplinarity actually affects research; how interdisciplinarity has affected the traditional disciplines; what role institutions play in fostering interdisciplinarity; and what role the NSF has played in the development of interdisciplinary nanoscale research.

Early Cold War

Archival research on the first three MRLs (Penn, Cornell, Northwestern) and on early second-wave MRLs (MIT, Stanford)
Extended oral histories with early figures in the Penn LRSM
Study of contemporary debates about materials science (von Hippel v. Slater)

Late Cold War

Archival research on early NNUN and other microfabrication centers (Cornell, MIT, Stanford, Howard)
Interviews with leading microfabrication specialists of the ’70s and ’80s
Study of the role of the Gordon Research Conference on Microstructure Fabrication and other meetings in the development of micro/nanofabrication

Post Cold War

Archival research at Rice and Chemical Heritage Foundation on Rice Quantum Institute, Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, and Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology
Interviews with members of RQI, CNST, and CBEN
Study of commercialization of carbon nanotubes, to be published as CHF white paper and edited volume chapter

For further information about this project link to

Some Representative Publications that Address Interdisciplinarity:

H Choi and CCM Mody, “The Long History of Molecular Electronics: Microelectronics Origins of

Nanotechnology,” Social Studies of Science 39 (2009).1.

CCM Mody, “Instruments of Commerce and Knowledge: Probe Microscopy, 1980-2000,” in Science and

Engineering Workforce Project Proceedings, ed. Richard Freeman and Daniel Goroff (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, forthcoming): 291-319.

CCM Mody, “Institutions as Stepping Stones: Rick Smalley and the Commercialization of Nanotubes” (Göteborg,

Sweden: Chalmers Institute of Technology Nanoscience seminar, October 13, 2008).