The Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law received a grant recently to research the legal effects of a technology that could be worth more than $1 trillion in less than a decade.
The $314,000 grant came from the Department of Energy and will be used to anticipate and offer legal solutions for the regulation of nanotechnology, said Dr. Gary Marchant, executive director for the Center for Law, Science and Technology within the College of Law.
Nanotechnology is the study of matter on an ultra-small scale.
Marchant, one of the three ASU faculty to receive the federal grant, said nanotechnology could be a part of 10 to 15 percent of the U.S. economy and also be a vital component of the world economy in several years.
"There's no question it's going to be big. The question is how big," Marchant said of the growing field. "There's a lot of uncertainty."
The grant, which the Center applied for in January 2007, is the first federal funding for the Center's study of nanotechnology, Marchant said.
Marchant said the Center would use the funding to explore the current and future consequences of the United States and global laws regarding nanotechnology.
The Center for Law, Science and Technology is similar to a legal think tank within the College of Law and has been researching the intersection between existing and emerging technologies and U.S. law for about 25 years, Marchant said.
Douglas Sylvester, a professor with the center and a recipient of the grant, said the school was trying to move ahead of the curve in anticipating the effects of nanotechnology on legislation around the world by studying other countries' legal reaction to the technology.
"One of our strong views is that we need to be thinking about nanotechnology regulations globally because it doesn't make sense to just focus on one country at a time when it's going to create global effects," he said.
Reach the reporter at: mculber@asu.edu.
