Imagine the marriage of hard metals or semiconductors to soft organic or biological products. Picture the strange, wonderful offspring hybrid materials never conceived by Mother Nature.</p>
<p>The applications in medicine and manufacturing are staggering, says biologist Steven Lenhert, the newest faculty face of nanoscience at The Florida State University.</p>
<p>How about a mobile phone fitted with a lab on a chip that can diagnose illness? That and much more are real possibilities, according to Lenhert.</p>
<p>Nanotechnology is already saving lives, and will be crucial to the sustainability of life as we know it on Earth, he said.</p>
<p>Lenhert is the lead author of a groundbreaking paper published in the April 2010 edition of Nature Nanotechnology the disciplines premier journal.</p>
<p>At age 32, he is internationally recognized for his innovative work in the evolving field of bionanotechnology the union of biology and nanotechnology and a related process, Dip-Pen Nanolithography (DPN), which uses a sharp, pen-like device and ink to write nanoscale patterns on solid surfaces. Both are capable of producing materials with enormous potential not only for diagnostic applications in health care but also for virtually any field that uses materials, from tissue engineering to drug discovery to computer chip fabrication.</p>
<p>In other words, it is big-deal technology on a nanoscale. Nanotechnology encompasses objects that measure just 100 nanometers or less in at least one of their dimensions. One nanometer equals a billionth of a meter.</p>
<p>Think of one nanometer as the length that a hair grows in one second, Lenhert said.</p>
<p>Florida State hired Lenhert to further enhance the interdisciplinary cluster of faculty who form the Integrative NanoScience Institute (INSI) a key part of the universitys ambitious Pathways of Excellence initiative. His cutting-edge work in nanobiology is expected to serve as an ideal complement to the materials science and engineering research already underway there.</p>
<p>Together, they mean to make the institute a world-class bionanotechnology center.</p>
<p>As an INSI member, Lenhert will collaborate on the Institutes cutting-edge research with distinguished faculty from cell and molecular biology, chemistry and biochemistry, materials science, chemical and biomedical engineering, and physics.