EAGER: Long-term View on Nanotechnology R&D as Reflected in Scientific Papers, Patents, and NSF Awards

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The National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) has been underway since 2001, with attempts at coordinating federal work dating back even earlier. Over its history, NNI has been instrumental in establishing more than 60 state-of-the-art interdisciplinary research and education centers working in fields as diverse as health, aeronautics, energy, and defense. In this award, researchers at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Arizona will conduct a longitudinal examination of the output of the twenty years of nanotechnology research and development (1991-2010), including statistical trends and topic analysis. This will be accomplished using a information diffusion model to understand the influences on nanotechnology R&D and the outcomes resulting from the many billions spent on these efforts over the past two decades. Sources of data will include articles and scientific papers, United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patents, and NSF awards. This modeling technique, typically used in the context of epidemics and the spread of infectious diseases, will be used to analyze emerging topics and possible future knowledge patterns. By examining the patterns by which information diffuses from scientific discovery into patents and commercial products, the model can be used to help estimate the probability of a granted patent document to be cited by others in the future. This is important as in a rapidly changing field such as nanotechnology, past performance is not necessarily the best predictor of future success.The results of this analysis can help stakeholders, policymakers, and funding agencies such as NSF understand what the impact of funding and knowledge diffusion is on nanotechnology research and development. This understanding can then in turn be used as a tool to help influence future policies, procedures, and R&D funding.