Ted Sargent
Innovator in Nanotechnology
Ted Sargent holds the rank of Professor at the University of Toronto where he serves as Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology. He was named to the 2005 Scientific American 50 - an annual list "...recognizing outstanding leaders in science and technology from the past year" - for his contributions to flexible infrared solar cells. In 2004-5 he was Visiting Professor in Nanotechnology and Photonics at MIT. In 2003 he was named "one of the world's top young innovators" by MIT's Technology Review.
Ted Sargent holds the rank of Professor at the University of Toronto where he serves as Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology. He was named to the 2005 Scientific American 50 - an annual list "...recognizing outstanding leaders in science and technology from the past year" - for his contributions to flexible infrared solar cells. In 2004-5 he was Visiting Professor in Nanotechnology and Photonics at MIT. In 2003 he was named "one of the world's top young innovators" by MIT's Technology Review. In 2002 he was honoured by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research as one of Canada's top twenty researchers under age forty.
Ted Sargent received the B.Sc.Eng. (Engineering Physics) from Queen's University in 1995 and the Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering (Photonics) from the University of Toronto in 1998.
His book, The Dance of Molecules: How Nanotechnology is Changing Our Lives, was released in the United States in January 2006.
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Nanotechnology
The US military spent over a billion dollars on it in 2003. Prince Charles worries that it could lead "miniscule robots reproducing like viruses, feeding off all natural matter and consuming the whole planet, leaving behind only a grey goo." In Prey, Michael Crichton has it leading to miniature robots, escaped from a secure research laboratory in the Nevada desert, threatening to engulf the world. The New York Times reported in 2004 that it causes extensive brain damage in fish. Medical companies claim that it could catch cancer before it spreads, seeking and destroying cells at the first sign of mutation.
What is nanotechnology? Ted Sargent takes audiences to the heart of the true world of nanotechnology – a world more fascinating and surprising than Michael Creighton's nanobots.
"Nano" refers to one billionth of a meter: the size of a few atoms clustered together to form a molecule. Nanotechnology more profoundly revolutionary than just miniaturization. Atoms and molecules are dominated by different forces, and governed by different rules, when they interact on the scale of the nanometer. In living organisms, atoms and molecules organize themselves into proteins, tissues, and ultimately living, thinking, emoting beings.
Nanotechnologists are seeking to harness the same principles to prompt matter into constructing itself. Atoms and molecules don't obey the laws of physics we experience day-to-day: instead they reveal in their behaviour the mysterious, surprising rules of quantum mechanics – the post-modern Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to name one example. Nanotechnologists turn quantum mechanics' rules to advantage to build new materials, chips, and medical treatments tailored to society's needs.
Ted Sargent leads a lab of researchers making designer molecules and materials for communications and computing, medicine, and tapping new energy sources. He speaks from the perspective of one innovating at the forefront of the next industrial revolution. He tells the story of how nanotechnology developed, what scientists have achieved up to the moment, and where it could all lead. He describes what it could mean for businesspeople, citizens, patients, and parents.
Ted will emphasize particular areas of application in response to an organization's mandate. He is prepared to discuss: Information technology: A trillion-bit-per-second Internet through nanotechnology
Health and medicine: Catching cancer at the earliest signs - seeking and destroying the first renegade cell
Antiterrorism: Early detection of biological, chemical, and human threats
The Environment: Harnessing the power of the sun and enabling the hydrogen economy Ted will spend some time on the fundamentals, devote considerable time to the application of core interest to the group, and discuss futuristic, ethical, policy, and business implications of nanotechnology.
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December 2005The Dance of Molecules
In this groundbreaking exploration of the future of nanotechnology, Ted Sargent reveals how all disciplines of science, from medicine to microchips, are converging to create materials using the tiniest scale possible—molecule-by-molecule. In an age when science often evokes more fear than faith, when the potential for superviruses and diabolical cloning looms in our consciousness, Sargent enthusiastically illuminates nanotech’s positive possibilities.
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