Apply by December 31 for one of 20 $100,000 grants offered by the Thiel Foundation to those under 20 to develop their entrepreneurial dreams.

The Thiel Foundation is offering $100,000 grants to innovators age 19 or younger who want to skip college and focus on their work, their research, and their self-education—Deadline Dec 31.

Excellent lineup of speakers again this year for the Open Science Summit, Oct. 22-23, and you can get in for only $100 if you register by this Friday:  http://opensciencesummit.com Hope to see you there!  —Christine Peterson, President, Foresight Institute

A green nanotechnology roadmap released by the American Chemical Society describes the opportunities and barriers to developing commercial applications of nanomaterials that present little threat of harm to health and the environment, and concludes with an action agenda to more forward.

We’re going to take a shot at doing a live webcast of Foresight@Google: 25th Anniversary Conference and Celebration. See this page for schedule and link: http://foresight.org/reunion/schedule.html It’s free so please have patience if we run into any technical difficulties. You can try sending questions to speakers by using this Twitter tag (though in-person participants get first [...]

Will proposals to establish criteria for green nanotechnology foster growth of nanotechnology innovation?

Research and Science Education Subcommittee Chairman Dan Lipinski (IL-03) expressed his strong support for the National Nanotechnology Initiative’s draft Strategic Plan, in particular its focus on ensuring that America’s substantial investment in nanotech research and development is turned into new companies, products, and jobs.

This talk will highlight several examples that you may not be following of companies with the breakthroughs to drive forward during the recovery.

Video footage of conference focused on “Updating the social contract for Science”

Redefining Humanity in the Era of Radical Technological Change, December 4-5, 2010, Pasadena, CA

Nanodot normally focuses on longer-term nanotechnologies such as molecular manufacturing, but we do like to keep an eye on how different countries compare to each other in nanotech and technology in general. Below is an excerpt from a recent Lux Research announcement; you can read the full PDF here: U.S. Risks Losing Global Leadership in [...]

The Open Science Summit on July 29-31 in Berkeley is looking better and better. Topics include OpenPCR, DIY biology, open source hardware, brain preservation, synthetic biology, gene patents, open data, open access journals, reputation engines, crowd-funding and microfinance for science, citizen science, biohacking, open source biodefense, cure entrepreneurs, open source drug discovery, patent pools, tech transfer, and [...]

Reading this essay by Peter Thiel, I was struck by an amusing (though almost certainly coincidental) parallel. Thiel mentions three areas in which people interested in freedom may manage to get out from under the thumb of excessive government: cyberspace, seasteading, and outer space. The parallel is to three fronts on which people are pursuing [...]

Google has started a venture-capital unit to fund new technologies, including nanotechnology.

Many thanks to the Forbes/Wolfe Emerging Tech Report for permission to reprint the following interview with Steve Jurvetson “Writing the Code of Life”, which appeared in their February 2009 issue. There aren’t many investors as sharp, quick or multi-disciplinary as Steve Jurvetson,Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. His firm is a leading venture capital firm [...]

The Society of Manufacturing Engineers is offering a free webinar on “Today’s Pioneering Nanotechnology Companies: The Race for a Trillion Dollar Market“, presented by Foresight Senior Associate Tihamer “Tee” Toth-Fejel. Today’s Pioneering Nanotechnology Companies: The Race for a Trillion Dollar Market A popular feature of SME’s annual NanoManufacturing Conference, now brought to you as a [...]

Our favorite nanotechnology VC is Steve Jurvetson, who is interviewed over at LiveMint.com from India, which is affiliated with The Wall Street Journal. An excerpt: How are the elements of the nanotech start-up ecosystem different from other sectors? First, it is hard to find human talent because a lot of the really interesting breakthroughs happen [...]

A recent article in the Small Business (sic) section of The New York Times reports that nanomaterials-based firms are starting to head toward public offerings: Nanotechnology companies, nurtured on billions of dollars in government grants and venture investments through most of this decade, are getting ready to go public…At the beginning of this decade, nanotechnology [...]

Foresight president Dr. Pearl Chin was interviewed on nanotechnology by Stephen Gordon and PJ Manney on Dec. 16, and the show can now be downloaded for your listening edification. A brief summary appears on Phil Bowermaster’s blog The Speculist: Dr. Chin is excited about [the] medical advance that nanoparticles are making possible – particularly with [...]

The reinsurance firm Swiss Re is rather farther along on nanotechnology, but Lloyd’s of London is starting to step up to the question of how to insure nanotech. They had a recent conference to launch their new report Nanotechnology: Recent Developments, Risks and Opportunities (PDF). As one would expect, it mainly focuses on nanoparticles, but [...]