Details of $200m Texas Emerging Technology Fund to be Released at NanoTX’06

Technologists and business leaders from around the country have been requesting detailed information on how the Texas governor’s office launched the Emerging Technology Fund. Now the office of Governor Rick Perry, in cooperation with the Texas Nanotechnology Initiative, has agreed to have two people key to the funds creation and implementation release a detailed study of the fund at nanoTX’06.

The Texas Emerging Technology Fund is $200,000,000 designed to assist the development and commercialization of several technologies important in the future of Texas, with nanotechnology being among the foremost.

To be released are valuable insights in the creation of the fund, its passage through the Texas legislature, and how it is being implemented, told by three key people. "It was difficult and complicated in organizing technologists and businesses to get behind such an effort in a state as large as Texas," says Kelly Kordzik, president of the Texas Nanotechnology Initiative in Austin. Kordzik is joining with the governor’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Phil Wilson, and Mark Ellison, Director of the Texas Emerging

Technology Fund at nanoTX’06 in Dallas where they will tell how to push such an effort through a legislature that is heavily focused on other budgetary items. The team will also explain how the fund is being used around the state to commercialize advanced technologies such as nanotechnology.

"It is truly impressive to see how hard the Texas Nanotechnology Initiative has been working to promote nanotechnology in Texas and heartfelt congratulations to your fruitful efforts…," said the Manager of Economic Development in Fairfax County, VA, Katalin Vaughan. "I am definitely planning to attend and penciled the dates into my calendar already."

nanoTX’06 is a world scale nanotechnology conference and expo held at the Dallas Convention Center September 27-28, 2006.

Presented by the Texas Nanotechnology Initiative, the event carries the theme: The Promise of Tomorrow—The Business of Nanotechnology.

According to Kordzik, nanoTX’06 will draw the top minds in four vital and interrelated nanotech areas of commerce: Semiconductor/MEMS/NEMS, Defense/Homeland Security/Aerospace, Biomed/Health Sciences, and Energy/Chemical/Environment, plus an intense study of Trends/Finance/Investing by leading experts of industry. "An event of this quality and magnitude is drawing world-wide attention to Texas," says Kordzik. "There are 40 countries with state sponsored nanotechnology programs, including Japan, UK, Korea, Canada, Australia, France, the list keeps growing."

Cosponsoring organizations include the Nanotechnology Foundation of Texas and the Texas Healthcare & Bioscience Institute. Speakers will present the latest research on how their nanotech applications apply to business and commerce, and include such respected names as Dr. Ray H. Baughman, Director of the NanoTech Institute of the University of Texas at Dallas and the Robert A. Welch Professor of Chemistry. Dr. Baughman will speak on New Inventions of UTD’s NanoTech Institute: From Multifunctional Nanotube Fibers and Sheets to Artificial Muscles, Displays, and Devices for Energy Harvesting, Storage, and Conversion. Among other top pioneers in nanotech to speak include Dr. Hans Stork, CTO at Texas Instruments; Sue Billat, Benchmark Strategies; Dr. Mark Pinto, Sr. VP and CTO at Applied Materials; Mark Hakey of IBM Corporation and Jim Von Ehr, founder of Zyvex Corporation, the first molecular nanotechnology company in the world. Zyvex is a highly renowned world-scale player in the nanotechnology community, the most publicized private nanotechnology business in the world, and the most highly regarded company in the field of molecular assemblers.

One of the highlights of nanoTX’06 will be the Nobel Laureate Legends reception, dedicated to the memory of the late Jack Kilby, where Nobel prize winners in various related fields will openly discuss their work and the future of nanotechnology, organized by Katharine Green, Director of Corporate Communications at Zyvex. Among the Nobel laureates to be honored will be Dr. Robert Curl of Rice University (Buckyball fame), and Dr. Alan MacDiarmid of the University of Texas, Dallas (2000 winner, Synthetic Metals).

Never before such a gathering of the top minds in nanotechnology, such as Dr. James S. Murday, Superintendent of Chemistry Division, Naval Research Laboratory; Dr. Kimberly McGrath, Director of Fuel Cell Research at QuantumSphere; Dr. David Bishop, VP of Nanotechnology at Bell Labs/Lucent; Dr. Christopher Rothfuss of the U.S. State Department; Dr. Bob Gower, CEO of Carbon Nanotechnologies; Randy Bell, CEO of Nanotechnologies, Inc; Dr. Harold Garner at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, to mention only a small few.

Also invited are luminaries such as Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison; Congressman Joe Barton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce committees; W. J. "Billy" Tauzin, PhRMA; Malcolm O’Neil, VP and CTO of Lockheed Martin.

Trends/Finance/Investing will feature a panel of venture capitalists and such names as Carl Johnson, President of INFRASTRUCTURE; Dr. Zvi Yaniv, CEO at Applied Nanotech; Howard Berke, CEO at Konarka Technologies; Dr. Harris Goldberg, CEO InMat; and Jonathan Javitt, Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins University, among others.

Kordzik says that Dallas was chosen because "Texas deserves to host a world class nanotechnology event and the Convention Center is big enough to hold it on the dates that are needed."