Recent Presentations
Don’t know what Nanotechnology is? Don’t know what it can do for your company?
South East Business Network Industry Breakfast: Friday 7 May 2010, Dandenong, Victoria
Tim will use his vast and diverse experience to case studies demonstrating practical ways in which nanotechnology – and other emerging technologies – can be used in business. He will explore the hurdles, as well as looking at how and why some people got it right and what happened to the ones that went to the wall!
Much of the novelty of nanotechnology appears to have worn off…. which is a good thing for anyone wanting to make use of it! After 10 years and tens of billions of dollars, nanotech is finally making the transition from an ‘interesting bit of science’ to something that can actually be used. The reason? This technology is now mature enough for supply chains to be stable and reliable (you wouldn’t want to start a big development project if your only supplier was a couple of guys in a university lab!).
Today, much of nanotech is invisible – and not just because of its size. A technology is maturing (and therefore usable) when people stop shouting about what it might do and just get on with using it. Obviously, availability, cost and ease of use are also critical. It has already found its way into textiles, paints, adhesives, tyres, furniture, insulation, sporting goods, medical diagnostics, microelectronics and drug treatment – in most cases adding significant value, or opening up new markets.
Download the presentation here
Sustainable Nanotechnology (and other emerging technologies)
Cleantech Science and Solutions: – Mainstream and at the Edge: Thursday May 6th 2010, Melbourne, Victoria
Nanotechnologies and Clean Tech may at first seem to be odd bedfellows, but as long ago as 1998 the late Nobel prize winning chemist, Richard Smalley, was advocating the use of nanotechnology to help address the impending population driven energy crisis. In fact nanotechnologies and Clean Tech have even more in common, both have been massively funded by governments around the world, have been over hyped, and have taken rather longer than early investors had imagined to show results.
But sustainability is about more than just energy generation. It encompasses a whole range of other issues, from over dependence on dwindling natural resources to improving public health, and these are areas where our understanding of the properties of materials at the nanoscale can have a major impact.
Cheap point of care diagnostics have the ability to prevent disease thus cutting down treatment costs, lighter stronger composite materials are helping us make better use of the energy technologies we currently use, and new bottom up production techniques are helping us rethink the way we use natural resources.
This combination of nanotechnologies, industrial biotechnology, synthetic biology and a number of other emerging technologies has the potential to create new sustainable industries that will be as significant for the 21st century as petrochemicals, plastics and semiconductors were to the past century. But who will be the winners and losers, what action should governments take, and what kind of investment opportunities exist?
View Tim Harper's profile