The Barometer Online

Issue date: 6/4/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Jeff Wick Paul L. McEuen, a professor of physics at Cornell University, speaks Wednesday at Weniger Hall. McEuen discussed energy-saving techniques using synthetics and solar cells.

The physics department hosted Paul McEuen, professor of physics at Cornell University and world-renowned expert in the science and technology of nanostructure, on Wednesday night.

McEuen spoke about current applications of nanotechnology, how it has pervaded our society and what the future holds in store for nanotechnology.

"Small is All: Nano, Bio, and the Future of Technology" is this year's lecture of the Physics Yunker Lecture Series.

The Yunker Lecture Fund was founded in the early 1980s by Gertrude Yunker to honor her husband, Dr. Edwin Yunker. Yunker was a faculty member in the OSU physics department from 1925 to 1968, and he was department chair from 1949 to 1966.

"It was a very down to earth presentation … these are the problems and this is how we can solve them", said Henry Jones, head of the physics department.

McEuen spoke about the two types of nanotechnology: synthetic and living. Synthetic nanotechnology primarily concerns computers, which have drastically changed the way our society functions.

"We can build an entire city on a chip, an entire planet on a wafer," McEuen said.

Living nanotechnology, however, is far more advanced. In the same amount of space where a transistor within a processor holds one bit of information, the head of a virus contains hundreds of thousands of permutations of DNA molecules that store the data that allows the virus to function.

"[These two technologies] are starting to blend together," McEuen said. "In the not-so-distant future, we will be able to sequence the DNA of everyone in this room … there is a lot of debate as to how great or not great this will be."

McEuen also forecasted the potential for the expansion of nanotechnology into biology and the formation of a new field: synthetic biology.

"The idea is to turn biology into an engineering discipline and to create an organism [that] does not what it wants to, but what we want it to do," McEuen said.

McEuen also spoke about the serious potential for this technology to be used for ill.

Specifically, McEuen discussed the potential for someone to sequence the genome for the Ebola virus and thereafter use it as a weapon.

"You can't stop it; it's coming. You can only shape it," McEuen said.

McEuen wrapped up with a discussion of energy and how the nanotechnology of photovoltaic solar cells will have a profound effect on the energy issues of the future.

McEuen said, however, that this will not be enough and that it will be a while before this technology makes any great gains.

"It's easy to be more efficient, McEuen said. "That's the thing we can do today."

Ben Sundberg, staff writer

news@dailybarometer.com, 737-2231

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