Panel discussion on nanotechnology Tuesday

Nanotechnology promises to be as big as plastics in the 1960s, but relatively little is known about it. To fill in the blanks, a panel discussion titled "Nanotechnology: Buzz, Buckyballs, and Business on the World's Tiniest Stage" will take place at 8 p.m. Tuesday, February 26, in the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College. The event is presented in conjunction with the current Tang exhibition Molecules That Matter, whose top ten 20th-century molecules include Buckminsterfullerene, a carbon molecule instrumental in launching nanotechnology.

	"buckyball"

"Given the excitement and potential surrounding such regional developments as the plan to bring a major computer-chip company here, this seemed like a good moment to look at the field right now, right here, and consider what may be happening in the coming decade and beyond," said Tang Museum director John Weber, who co-curated Molecules That Matter with Skidmore chemistry professor Ray Giguere.

Free and open to the public, the discussion will bring together three leaders in several areas of the technological field to address the industry's scientific, ethical, and commercial concerns and to provide a historical overview of the booming new field.

• Technological entrepreneur Lamar Hill is a member of the Tech Valley regional economic team that is bringing Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), a global supplier of integrated computer circuits, to Saratoga County to build a manufacturing campus.
• Science journalist Jason Gorss is manager of media relations at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, where he oversees a staff of science writers and public-information officers at the nation's oldest technological university.
• Christopher Allen, a chemistry professor emeritus from the University of Vermont, is a past director of the Vermont Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research and currently serves as senior scientific advisor to the Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies, a high-tech incubator affiliated with UVM.

Discovered in 1985, Buckminsterfullerene ("buckyball") is so named because its spherical molecular structure resembles the geodesic dome invented by Buckminster Fuller. Buckminsterfullerene and its close relative, the cylindrical carbon nanotube, are important to nanotechnology due to their flexibility and strength. At one billionth of a meter, a nanometer is so small that a typical comma on a printed page measures around half a million of them. ("Nano" is Greek for "dwarf.") The invention and employment of such drastically tiny materials allow molecular scientists to work at the atomic level to make new substances or improve existing ones.

For more information, call 518-580-8080 or visit the Tang Web site .