There is not much you can do today without witnessing the involvement of nanotechnology to some degree; nanotechnology is present in almost every part of our lives. Transport, entertainment, communications, most electronic technology, including TVs, computers and cameras, and even in our food; for creating new textures, packaging, taste, and performance enhancement. There is very little we can do in the 21st Century without paying some credit to nanotechnology.
Nanotechnology is pivotal to global markets and worth billions of dollars annually, when you look at the United States and the interest in performance of Apple Inc. you can begin to understand the role nanotechnology will have in our lives over the next few decades.
To try and create a more cohesive structure to how nanotechnology works across all of these areas and begin to explore the opportunities it holds, NANOfutures was set up. NANOfutures was actually set up in 2010 to address these challenges and opportunities, it was set up to run for two years with funding from the European Union. NANOfutures is known as a European Technology and Innovation Platform or ETIP, bringing together industry, academia, research establishments, NGOs, SMEs, policy, legal and all other sectors with interest or involvement in nanotechnology.
The most important findings from the ETIP is their Research and Industrial Roadmap report, http://nanofutures.info/sites/default/files/NANOfutures_Roadmap july 2012_0.pdf which charts a strategy for accelerated growth to 2020 for a safe and commercially viable nanofuture. NANOfutures had some very challenging targets and given the diversity of issues facing this area of science, this is a useful result for us to continue growing.