MIT expands nanotechnology facilities

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, home of the Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub), is set to unveil a US$350 million building project to expand its facilities for nanotechnology research.

The extra space will double the size of the nanotechnology clean room and imaging facilities. The Boston Globe spoke to Vladimir Bulovic, faculty leader for the project, who said that the nanometer is ‘the operative unit for what MIT faculty does these days’. “Is it that we’re trying to make a better cement and we need to engineer those molecules? Or are we thinking about nanomedicines? Or a switch for the next iPhone 7 coming down the line? Or a new display technology? A lot of it engages in some way in the nanoscale,” he said.

The current facilities were built in the 1990s and designed to support 70 researchers; today, the number of researchers has risen to 700. The new building, called ‘MIT.nano’, will support 2000 researchers when it is completed in 2018.

CSHub is a dedicated team of interdisciplinary researchers from several MIT departments working on concrete and infrastructure science, engineering and economics.

Edited from various sources by Katherine Guenioui

Read the article online at: https://www.worldcement.com/the-americas/29042014/mit_to_expand_nanotechnology_facilities_104/