Proving that big is not necessarily beautiful, a new €30 million centre designed to give the Republic a lead in an emerging area of miniature science was officially opened yesterday.
The landmark building on the Trinity College campus fronts on to Dublin's Pearse Street and is a key element in the strategy to make the Republic a leader in nanotechnology.
Already, advances in nanotechnology, which is about the understanding of things at the atomic level and the creation of devices at that scale, are being used in products as diverse as golf clubs and sun cream.
The Naughton Institute, named after industrialist Martin Naughton, will be home to the cross-discipline Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices (Crann). Mr Naughton, the founder of Glen Dimplex the Irish-based multinational electrical goods manufacturer, donated €5 million to establish the institute.
Dr Diarmuid O'Brien, executive director of Crann, said the opening of the building was the culmination of a five-year "labour of love".
The institute will also house the world's first science gallery which will occupy two floors of the five-storey over basement building. It opens its doors to the public on February 2nd with Lightwave, a nine-day festival showcasing the use of light in science, technology and art.
It will attempt to stimulate public interest by letting visitors play computer games projected on the side of a building, experiment with the colour vision of a swarm of live bees or enjoy an installation by U2's lighting designer, Willie Williams.
"The science gallery comes from the realisation that you have to communicate the value of science and technology to the public, particularly as we are spending public funds," said Prof John Boland, director of Crann.
Crann has attracted more than €70 million in funding for its work, most of which has been provided by the Government through Science Foundation Ireland.
The two core areas that Crann is hoping to apply its research to are the next generation of computer chips and healthcare. Dr O'Brien said nanotechnology will make it possible to create medicines to act only on sick cells rather than large sections of the body. The US National Science Foundation estimates that the market for nanotechnology will be worth $1 trillion (€686 billion) by 2010. The Republic was recently ranked sixth in the world for its research in the area, ahead of Japan, France, Germany and the UK.
The institute and a nearby sports centre are part of the first of four phases in the regeneration of Dublin's Pearse Street. Speaking at the opening, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern welcomed the investment, saying the street had been a "pretty bleak place for the last 30 or 40 years, if not longer".
The design and construction of the research laboratories in the basement of the building was complicated by vibrations from the railway line and busy city street, which the institute is sandwiched between.
