UCF’s Dr. Tom O’Neal Testifies before the Subcommittee on Science and Space of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation

WASHINGTON, D.C. --- Sometimes, the biggest new things can come in the smallest packages. That’s the thrust of testimony Dr. Tom O’Neal delivered to the Subcommittee on Science and Space of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation in Washington recently.

Dr. O’Neal, associate vice president of Research in the Office of Research and Commercialization at the University of Central Florida, appeared before the subcommittee to provide insight into the commercialization and potential for NanoScience technology.

“Science is on the verge of revolutionary breakthroughs in NanoScience,” Dr. O’Neal explained.

“We can look forward to orders-of-magnitude increases in computer efficiency, human organ restoration using engineered tissue, “designer” materials created from directed assembly of atoms and molecules, and the emergence of entirely new phenomena in chemistry and physics,” he said.

Dr. O’Neal said the effect of nanotechnology on the health, wealth, and standard of living for people in this century could be at least as significant as the combined influences of microelectronics, medical imaging, computer-aided engineering, and man-made polymers developed in the last century.

The future is not that far away. Already, nanoscience has ‘infiltrated’ or enabled new devices or improvement in older devices, Dr. O’Neal said.

“For example, Photonic band gap materials are nano devices that enhance telecommunications,” Dr. O’Neal said. Another example is “Photo-thermal-refractive (PTR) glass, a nano structure material, that is used to bend light at different angles by using nanoparticles and Bragg gratings,” he said.

The University of Central Florida is emerging as one of the leading research centers contributing to the advance of nanotechnology.

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