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Message from the Directors

Over the last two decades, nanoscience research has demonstrated the potential to greatly improve functionality in areas such as electronics, healthcare and energy. It is fair to say, however, that few of these discoveries have found their way into the market place. Deployment of these advances at societal-impact scales will require revolutionary advances in high volume nanomanufacturing while simultaneously addressing scalability, reliability, sustainability and cost constraints. Furthermore, business innovation and the development of a high-tech workforce are critical to success.

About Nascent

This NSF Nanosystems ERC entitled Nanomanufacturing Systems for mobile Computing and Energy Technologies (NASCENT) is a partnership between The University of Texas at Austin, The University of New Mexico, The University of California at Berkeley, Indian Institute of Science, and Seoul National University. NASCENT will focus on creating high throughput, reliable and versatile nanomanufacturing systems through transformative research, education, and industrial partnerships. It will emphasize applications in the rapidly emerging area of mobile computing technologies which we believe will have a global impact on all aspects of healthcare, education, commerce, communications, computing and lifestyle in the coming decades. While mobile devices will be used to set the goals and priorities of Center manufacturing systems, the resulting knowledge will have much broader impact in computing, electronics, energy, healthcare, and sensing.

The NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center (NERC) for Nanomanufacturing Systems for Mobile Computing and Mobile Energy Technologies (NASCENT) will develop high throughput, high yield and versatile nanomanufacturing systems to take nano-science discoveries from the lab to the marketplace. The Center is led by The University of Texas at Austin and includes two partner institutions—University of California at Berkeley and University of New Mexico. Also included are Seoul National University in South Korea and Indian Institute of Science.

Mission

Create high throughput, reliable and versatile nanomanufacturing systems and associated processes through transformative research, education of leaders and global and industrial engagement that will revolutionize future generations of mobile computing and energy devices.

About NSF

The Engineering Research Centers (ERC) Program was created by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1985 to develop a government-industry-university partnership to strengthen the competitive position of U.S. firms in world trade. At the heart of this problem was the need to increase the productivity of U.S. industry in an increasingly global economy. The ERC program was designed to create long-term collaborations between universities and industry, create new industry-relevant knowledge at the intersections of the traditional disciplines, and prepare a new generation of engineering leaders who are more capable of engaging successfully in team-based, cross-disciplinary engineering practice.

Transformational Technologies

NASCENT Transformational Technologies Will Shape the Future of Mobile Computing and Mobile Energy Devices

  • Develop technologies, processes, and tools to create mobile devices with different form factors and novel nanomaterials with the goal of increasing battery life and storage capacity while keeping costs low.
  • The Center will crystallize and articulate practical requirements of future generation mobile computing and energy devices. We will create a NASCENT Center Technology Roadmap (NCTR) that will document the successful metrics for the enabling manufacturing systems and the prototypical mobile computing devices.
  • The Center will foster a culture of innovation to deliver valuable intellectual property for industrial partners, to commercially deploy Center technologies among the Center members, and through the creation of start-up companies.
  • The Center will develop a cadre of highly skilled future innovators and leaders that will include strong representation from underrepresented communities.