EAGER: A Longitudinal Study of Knowledge Diffusion and Societal Impact of Nanomanufacturing Research & Development: Harnessing Data for Science and Engineering

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Since the National Nanotechnology Initiative was implemented in 2000, significant progress has been made in understanding the unique physical phenomena that occur at the nano-scale and in designing and fabricating new nano-scale materials, structures, devices and systems. To realize the benefits to the nation of these advances in nanotechnology, however, advances must also be made in nanomanufacturing, and these advances must translate, in turn, into production by industry. This EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project will investigate the knowledge diffusion and societal impact of nanomanufacturing research, using advanced data analytics frameworks. The study results are expected to inform government, industry, and researchers in identifying research gaps and how resources and investments could be directed to address obstacles to scaling the most promising nanotechnology discovery to industrial production. The project is highly exploratory and hence suitable for the EAGER program. The research results will be broadly distributed. The project responds to the NSF Big Idea--Harnessing Data for 21st Century Science and Engineering.This project develops new analytical models and frameworks to study and analyze the outputs of research in nanomanufacturing. Nanotechnology studies are mostly high-level industry-wide reviews based on smaller-scale survey and are mostly available to members. This project is data science-driven, based on existing large databases and state-of-the-art data analytics including journal articles, patents, licenses and technology transfer datasets and made publicly available. The project develops a framework that systematically collects relevant data generated in the past 15-20 years from university technology transfer offices, public news databases, patents and publications, and analyzes the influence of research investments and specific projects on knowledge diffusion and its commercial impact. From the data, the project develops a novel, scalable text mining, topic modeling, trend analysis, and network analysis to quantify, evaluate, and visualize each research effort's long-term knowledge diffusion. The expected outcomes are to understand, (1) nanomanufacturing knowledge diffusion path from academic publications to patents to commercialization, (2) impact of federal investment in nanomanufacturing research in facilitating long-term knowledge diffusion, and (3) the difference between large-scale collaborative projects and small-scale individual projects facilitating long-term knowledge diffusion. The broad set of analytical techniques developed from this research are expected to further advance the scientific use of these methods.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.