• Question: What do you think of nanotechnology?

    Asked by theaidsmaster to Andrew, Ash, Gem, Paige, SJ on 2 Jul 2012.
    • Photo: SarahJayne Boulton

      SarahJayne Boulton answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      I think it’s pretty cool, I feel very involved with it, after all the nanosensors I developed were half of what my PhD thesis was written on.

      Right now nanotechnology is in a really early really exciting stage and we’re learning a lot about some great devices, however because of this inevitably there are a lot of dead ends springing up in terms of research avenues.

      I think some of the main areas where nanotechnologies could really prove super useful are medical diagnostics (making better more efficient tests for human disease) and drug delivery (to target toxic drugs to the specific place they should work – to reduce the side effects).

    • Photo: Ashley Cadby

      Ashley Cadby answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      I think nanotechnology is the way forward for manufacturing. I think smart materials which grow themselves will allow us to perform amazing feats.

    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      Nanotechnology is awesome! Nanotech is my area of specialty… especially using nanotechnology for medical and biological purposes. For my masters work in Biological Engineering, I created silver and gold nanoparticles that would be used to delivery drugs into the human body and release these drugs when we pointed lasers at the nanoparticles! Nanoparticles, especially small particles of gold or silver, or noble metal nanoparticles, interact specially with light. They can condense light down into a very small area! This is very useful for imaging nanoparticles, which appear very bright when illuminated with certain types of laser light. I used the special optical properties of nanoparticles to control drug release from the nanoparticle surface via light. When we hit our particles with a laser, they would ‘let go’ of the drugs they were holding and so the drugs could become active in the human body!!!

      Did you know that they are nanoparticles in sunscreen and self-cleaning windows that absorb sunlight? They are also silver nanoparticles in many textiles and other products that make these things naturally antibacterial, since silver nanoparticles kill bacteria easily! Nanotechnology can also be used in energy, because some nanoparticles are CATALYSTS for making some reactions happen faster than they would normally!

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