By Paul Tuthill
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Amherst, MA – The dean of the Massachusetts congressional delegation is urging the debt supercommittee in Washington not to make severe cuts in federal research grants. A report released this week from the office of US Representative Edward Markey warned such cuts could do serious damage in Massachusetts, where the economy depends on so-called innovation industries. WAMC's Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill reports.
High tech, clean tech, biotech are all part of the Massachusetts economy, and vital to the nation, according to Congressman Markey's plea to the bipartisan panel of members of Congress charged with producing a plan to cut 1 point 5 trillion dollars in federal spending.
On the same day Markey's office released the report, the federally funded National Science Foundation announced a 20 million dollar grant to continue research at the Nanotechnology Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus. The center specializes in engineering structures that are thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair. Eric Nakajima, of the Massachusetts Office of Economic Development says the center's work helps grow the state's economy
Specifically the grant is funding research at the university's Center for Hierarchical Manufacturing, where scientists are developing technologies to manufacture flexible electronics using a roll to roll process, similar to the way a newspaper gets printed. James Watkins, the center's director says there are a lot of commercial applications.
The center employs about 25 faculty at UMass Amherst and researchers at other places including Binghamton University in New York, M-I-T, Mount Holyoke College and the University of Michigan.
One of the industry partners is E-Ink. The company, based in Cambridge Massachusetts, invented the technology that is used in the Kindle, the Nook, and the rest of the electronic book readers. Michael McCreary, the company's chief technology officer says the research center at UMass is helping develop the technological building blocks to manufacture electronic ink
This is the second round of funding the National Science Foundation has awarded the Nanotechnology Center at UMass Amherst. When the center was created in 2006 it received a 16 million dollar federal grant and 7 million in state matching funds.