$46M U-M nanotech lab to be hotbed of innovation

Wednesday, October 6, 2010 | Source: Concentrate

Groundwork is being laid to help the University of Michigan spin out even more technologies into new economy businesses. The latest part of that foundation is a multi-million dollar federal grant to build a new nano-mechanical engineering lab complex.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is paying $9.5 million of the $46 million tab for the Center of Excellence in Nano Mechanical Science and Engineering. The new facility will provide a state-of-the-art, centralized location for scientists to develop advanced nanotechnologies that could have implications in the energy, manufacturing, healthcare, and biotechnology industries.

"It will be an enabling platform for us to pursue a broader scope of much more exciting projects," says Jack Hu, professor of mechanical engineering at U-M's College of Engineering.

U-M has aggressively gone after turning the inventions developed on its campus into spin-off companies and technologies with high potential to be licensed. The idea is reinvent the state's economy to be competitive in the 21st Century. This lab, which will combine nanotechnology and mechanical engineering, is expected to be another piece in the puzzle.

U-M plans to break ground on the new Center of Excellence in Nano Mechanical Science and Engineering in late 2011 and open it in 2013. The three-story complex will include 60 lab modules and space for 18 professors in a 62,880 square-foot addition to the G.G. Brown Laboratories on Hayward Street on North Campus.

Source: Jack Hu, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan
Writer: Jon Zemke

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