There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom“, is the title of a legendary lecture given by Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate in Physics, in December 1959. At that time, Feynman first presented the idea of the direct manipulation of individual atoms.

Fifty years later, in November 2009, there is a lot happening in the "room at the bottom": Nanotechnology has outgrown the laboratory and has become important for economy.

Since 2004, the Austrian NANO Initiative has made a significant contribution to ensuring that this transition from science to industry has been effective and rapid. The professional programme management at the FFG Austrian Research Promotion Agency, under the overall control of the BMVIT Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology managed to ideally integrate four strategic objectives:

• To strengthen and network Austrian protagonists from science and industry
• To create critical masses and thereby ensure international competitiveness
• To accelerate technology transfer and the economic utilisation of nanotechnology
• To establish nanotechnology in the public perception, in science communication and in the promotion of young researchers

Thanks to these strategic objectives, the NANO Initiative has succeeded over the last five years in supporting protagonists from Universities, non – University Research Organisations and Universities of Applied Sciences as well as enterprises located in Austria.

The purpose of this catalogue is to single out and present the collaborative Cluster Projects from the multifaceted promotion portfolio of the NANO Initiative, which includes national and transnational cooperative research and technology projects. These Cluster Projects are a substantial contribution to show the potential of nanotechnology and how it can be used to the benefit of business and society.

• Nanotechnology - The Cluster Projects of the Austrian NANO Initiative (pdf 1,7 MB) ~
  http://www.bmvit.gv.at /en /innovation /nano /downloads /nano_folder_en.pdf