TEMPE, Ariz. -- Scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs working on the leading edge of nanotechnology will gather at Arizona State University for the international Nano and Giga Challenges Symposium, March 14 to 16, 2007.

Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano will give a welcoming address at 9 a.m. March 14, officially opening an event, which is expected to draw as many as 500 attendees from 50 nations to ASUs campus in Tempe.

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon is scheduled to open the symposium sessions on the morning of March 16. Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman is to address attendees on March 15.

Two Nobel Prize winners in science will be featured speakers at the event, among 200 presenters and more than 60 speakers from top universities and national laboratories in 30 countries, as well as major international companies such as Intel, Motorola and IBM.

Nobel Laureates to attend are John Polanyi, a professor at the University of Toronto, won a Nobel Prize in 1986 for research in chemistry, and physicist Nicolaas Bloembergen, who won the prize in 1981 for work in laser spectroscopy. Bloembergen is a professor emeritus of Harvard University and now visiting professor at the Arizona Center for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Arizona.

They will join colleagues from academia, industry and government to explore ways to apply "nano" or molecular (small-scale) devices to meet "giga" (gigantic) scientific and technological challenges.

"This conference will provide a rare forum that brings scientists together with entrepreneurs to examine ideas for how to take nanotechnology research and employ it for successful commercial ventures," says Herb Finkelstein, industrial and government research liaison with ASUs Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering.

The focus will be on efforts to spark advances in nano-scale electronic and optoelectronic devices, high-performance integrated circuits, sensor technology and molecular
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Contact: Joe Kullman
joe.kullman@asu.edu
480-965-8122
Arizona State University
20-Feb-2007