NANOfutures
In this interview, Andrea E. Reinhardt, microTEC Gesellschaft für Mikrotechnologie mbH, tells briefly about NANOfutures. Reinhardt is chairing Working Group Communication at Nanofutures. She also gives her personal statement on the state of nanotechnology in Europe.
Listen to the full interview:
Andrea E. Reinhardt 2011-03-30
Summary of the interview:
Could you tell me about NANOfutures?
NANOfutures is an European integration and innovation platform. We are collecting from other technology platforms and additional stakeholders the offers and needs in nanotechnologies to aid structuring future R&D programs, but also help companies that apply new solutions to find relevant nanotechnologies faster.
We have a growing member base of today around 400, mainly European. We are helping people to get better understanding of what is possible with nanotechnology and how active also aspects of consumer safety are researched and followed. We run working groups dealing with e.g. security, environment, standardization, regulation, also finance and techtransfer.
How is NANOfutures present in EuroNanoForum?
Nanofuture is present in EuroNanoForum every day. Our members are among the speakers, and the 1st of June offers a special nanofutures day, were the latest results of the working groups are presented and we invited all nanofutures attendees to give their feedback and discuss with us future actions.
What is the state of nanotechnology in Europe in your point of view?
My personal statement is, that we have great examples in Europe in how to make money with nano. For examples those companies active in cleaning and consumer products are using latest nanotechnologies. Also, if you search for nano-patents, you can see that cosmetic products are using latest nanotechnology and if you buy e.g. L’oreal or others you will see that nano-inside is high value also from the point of sales. So on the one hand we have companies are taking advantage of new nanotechnology, and using that as advertising argument.
On the other hand we have these discussions within the European Parliament that we all should be careful and we need more restrictions. But this is an advantage of Europe, actively taking into consideration health and environmental aspects. We have very high class research and in several fields and money making applications, the combination is a good start. However, we could do better in coordination and hence, avoid reinventing the wheel of parallel actions. For this the Nanofutures community is working together too.
