Some tidbits from the presentations. The NIH seems to currently be spending ~$80M/year on all of the programs it "claims" are involved in nanotechnology. The NHBLI division plans to spend $54M over the next 5 years on nanotechnology research. And the David Thomassen from the DOE made the outrageous claim that within a few years they expect mass-spec analysis of the molecular contents of entire cells to yield more data from each experiment than is currently available on all the data storage devices currently available in the United States. (At least thats the way I heard it. It makes a certain amount of sense if you stop to consider the number and variety of molecules one has in a cell.) He was making an argument that we needed improved data compression and analysis as the data was being generated.

There is still a great deal of confusion as to what "nanotechnology" really is. Dr. Carlo Montemagno from UCLA really "gets" it — in terms of using biological parts as a basis for developing more complex "systems". Dr. James Baker from the Univ. of Michigan is still confused that dendrimers are nano-"technology" (one could say this but only if one really stretches the definition). Dendrimers more properly fall under chemical engineering and materials science. So its a very confused environment.