Program Item Details
TITLE: Dr. David Lynch, Dean of Engineering, University of Alberta
SUBJECT: #102 NRC-National Institute for Nanotechnology Sod Turning Ceremony
SYNOPSIS: ..
AUDIO: Download Audio (mp3 format)
TRANSCRIPT:
Intro: A key person is pulling the whole NRC-NINT project together, including the design of the building, is Dr. David Lynch, Dean of Engineering at the University of Alberta.
Dr. David Lynch
DL: My part as Dean of Engineering has actually been a role that cuts across all disciplines at the University, so I’m acting both as Dean and the University representative sponsor for creating this National Institute for Nanotechnology. So I have tried to work to bring together faculties, such as the Faculty of Engineering, Science, Dentistry, Medicine, and all the key researchers together to demonstrate and assemble a true critical mass of individuals in the nanotechnolgoy area.
And in addition to that, I’ve worked very closely with my colleagues at the NRC to ensure that the implementation of this major institute, which is a true joint initiative, comes to fruition. So here today, we’re at a really seminal moment of bringing together the better part of over a year and a half of detailed design work on this facility to announce we’re ready to start construction.
CC: ANNE MCLELLAN SAID IT COULD BE DECADES BEFORE WE EVEN REALLY REALIZE THE SIGNIGICANCE AND IMPORTANCE OF STARTING THIS INSTITUTE HERE . WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS?
DL: The area of nanotechnology is just in itsinfancy. We’re already seeing key developments even today that are moving from lab bench to the nrc labs in the new electrical and engineering research facility, developments are already starting to move and will be close to the marketplace soon. But they are just the very, very tip of the iceberg of what we don’t even know about yet.
And so as nano field develops, we will find so many new and exciting developments we can’t even imagine today. And that is why over the decades, we will see such phenomenal developments in so many areas, in energy that is so important for the province of Alberta, in creating surfaces that are almost indestructible, that cannot wear out, that cannot corrode. In the medical areas, finding new detections for illnesses, ability to treat, having at the micro and nano level targeted drug delivery. In the information communication and technology areas, computers that are thousands and millions times faster than today. The ability to move information, to move light, just like it’s electricity. Moving into all these areas that we can only see the very tip of the iceberg today, over the next decades there will be so many that we will look back to today, and say this was truly a ground breaking moment for the country to establish this Institute.
CC: THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE QUIETEST BUILDING IN CANADA. HOW ARE YOU GOING TO ACCOMPLISH THAT?
DL: Well, in order to create the quietest building in Canada, we have to address several major key technical challenges. The first area of quietness, as we call it, is the physical vibrations. Think of a car driving on the ground and it’s going over a few bumps in the road. Those vibrations get transmitted across the ground. And when that vibration then impacts on an instrument in the building, it can cause the instrument to shake. That’s a simple way of thinking about how a vibration can move across a surface. Somebody walking in a hallway. The steps can cause vibrations in labs next door. But what we are looking at are ways of creating physically isolated extremely stable concrete areas, that are separated from the building on which we can mount this key equipment that is isolated from the vibrations from elsewhere in the building, from the traffic outside, the natural vibrations in the earth, from the many things that occur.
This can be accomplished through some innovation construction techniques. Our team of design engineers, all of whom are U of A alumni, some of the key experts in world are acting as sub-consultants, and we’ve already designed some innovative areas that we believe will lead other institutions around the world to learn from us in terms of how to create physically quiet space.
The second area of quietness that is so important is electromagnetic quietness. And the reason that is so important is that things that we’ve become accustomed to using to look at things like transmission electron microscopes where we’re actually using beams of electrons to focus and image surfaces. These devices now become, when you include things like focusd eye and beam equipment, and various types of surface characterization, these can now be used to move and manipulate individual atoms. Amazing as that is, we cannot only see the atoms, we can move them around and create things out of them.
So if you think of doing that and you have this beam of electrons that is focused on a surface, any vibration in the beam itself will affect the ability to move at the nano level, Vibrations in a beam from an electron microsope can be caused by fluctuations in the electromagnetic fields surround the equipment. And vibrations in that field are created by something as simple as movement of metal through the earth’s magnetic field that surrounds us all. We are standing here with the earth’s magnetic field passing through us, and an elevator moving in the building will induce an electromagnetic field due to its metal moving through currents. This is a fundamental property of physics.
CC: ARE OUR CONSTRUCTION PEOPLE UP TO THAT?
DL: Our construction people are more than up to that. We have studied the phenomenon extensively. We have brought in some of the best minds from around the world to give us additional advice, And now we have looked at okay, how do we construct facilities that can be impervious or extremely resistant to these types of interferences, these vibrations, electromagnetic, structural pressure vibrations, variations, all of these things that can upset the stability of our instrumentation and our ability to manipulate. So we have an extremely innovative design team headed by the Cohos Evamy Partners, architects with structural engineering through Cohos Evamy, electrical engineering through Stantec, and through mechanical engineering through Hemisphere Engineering, plus a large group of sub consultants who have wrestled these problems to the ground, we know how we are going to address them,
There will always be new challenges coming at us, but we have a world class team here in Edmonton in Alberta, who then after they do these buildings will have an international marketable expertise that they will have developed by working on a project such as this.
CC: THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
DL: My pleasure. Thank you for your interest.
Dr. David Lynch is the Dean of Engineering at the University of Alberta.
I also spoke with Dr. Arthur Carty, President of the National Research Council. Dignitaries on hand for the ground breaking ceremonies included Dr. Dan Wayner, Director General for the the NRC-National Institute for Nanotechnology.
We also heard excerpts from the speeches by U of A President Rod Fraser, Alberta’s Minister of Innovation and Science Victor Doerksen, and Federal Minister Anne McLellan.
Starts at 20:50
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