After realizing the incredible potential of nanotechnology,
University of Toronto engineering professor Doug Perovic turned the
study of this emerging field into an undergraduate major.
One of the next big revolutions in science and technology—some
say the biggest since the Industrial Revolution—could be based
on something very, very small. And Doug Perovic, former competitive
hurdler, race car driver, and professor on the faculty of applied science
and engineering at University of Toronto, wants his students to play
their part in its realization.
Perovic has helped set up an undergraduate program at
U of T dedicated to nanotechnology, the study of the world at the scale
of one billionth of a meter—a nanometer. How small is that? Think:
the width of seven hydrogen atoms—or a millionth of the size of
the head of a pin.
Nanotechnology is one of the hottest buzzwords in research
today. Its proponents say that the field is at a similar developmental
level now that computers were back in the 1950s, including changes that
will occur in the next few decades that would confound the most prescient
science fiction writer and transform society in ways as yet unimaginable.
There is talk of programming nanorobots to perform surgery, repair the
thinning ozone layer, manufacture food and eliminate famine, create
smart machines that can fix themselves, paint computer screens on a
wall, and produce new resources that will make oil obsolete.
In fact, the word seems so all-inclusive that it is hard
for many people to know what is nano and what isn't. After all,
everything has a nanoscale to it - everything is built of atoms and
molecules. But true nanotechnology, as Perovic points out, is research
that is designed to create a property or behavior that would not exist
on a larger-size scale. Perovic points at a block of concrete. "This
is a nanoscale material when you break it down, but its mechanical behavior
is not governed at a nanoscale. It's more a micro- or macro-scale
product. Now if someone could take concrete and do something to its
intrinsic structure that not only gives you a material with the structural
characteristics that we know of in concrete but also, say, emits a signal
that tells you it is overstressed—that would be fantastic."
Perovic admits that is certainly not possible now based on what we know
about concrete, but it's an example of what nanotechnologists
are attempting to do: rearranging atoms or, more efficiently, coaxing
them to assemble themselves to produce products with revolutionary properties,
like materials with 10 times the strength of steel and only a fraction
of its weight and devices the size of sugar cubes that will be able
to store the contents of the Library of Congress.
Perovic dates his interest in science to a time long before
the word nanotechnology was coined. "As a kid, I must admit I
was always interested in the natural world," Perovic recalls.
"I collected insects and put them into jars and watched them fight
it out and see what would happen," he says with a mischievous
smile. In high school in the Toronto suburb of East York he gravitated
to physics. "It was nice to work in a field where you can reduce
things to simple, fundamental laws, a field that doesn't demand
a lot of memory work."
But Perovic was far from being just an academic star.
He was also a gifted athlete who played basketball, captained the high
school football team, and had his sights set clearly on competing in
the 110-meter hurdles in the 1984 Olympics until a cheap shot during
a punt return blew out his knee. His mother cushioned the blow by reminding
him of the old Chinese saying that "every crisis is an opportunity."
Perovic focused on his academic studies and zeroed in on a career in
science. It was a lot easier studying without jammed fingers and busted
ribs," he recalls.
After a year in the physics department at the University
of Toronto in the early ‘80s, Perovic switched to the school's
materials science and engineering department, drawn by the interdisciplinary
approach of a field that mixes physics, chemistry, and even biology.
"I thought it would be the right place to go at the time,"
he recalls, "and boy, did I make the right decision, because that's
exactly what nanotechnology has become—the convergence of the
basic sciences.
He polished off his Ph.D. in a year and a half—six
months less than U of T's minimum residence requirement. He started
work at Canada's National Research Council and then returned two
years later to the day he started his doctorate to defend his thesis
on nanostructures in films made of silicon and germanium. Perovic points
out that back in the mid- 80s, the research community realized that
mixing silicon—the backbone of the electronics industry—with
germanium in ultra-thin layers (four to five atoms wide) opened up a
whole series of new potential properties. That included the "holy
grail" in the semi-conductor field: getting light, rather than
just heat, from silicon. "That was exciting because it was the
early days of engineering at the nanoscale based on how atoms were connected."
He then moved on to Cambridge University's renowned
Cavendish Laboratory to continue his research. Not only did the experience
give him the chance to work with two of his idols in the field of electron
microscopy, Archie Howie and Mick Brown, it also placed him in a world
redolent with the history of cutting-edge science. "You'd
walk through the halls of this low-key, unpretentious lab and you'd
see the original equipment of towering figures in the history of science
like James Maxwell, J.J. Thomson, and Earnest Rutherford just sitting
there in glass cases," he says, his voice tinged with awe. "Any
place else that stuff would be in a museum. And then you see displays
of 18 Nobel Prizes that were won by people working at the Cavendish
and you realize that this is where they discovered the electron, the
atom, the nucleus, the neutron, the structure of DNA, X-Ray diffraction,
and on and on. It blows your mind."
After his two-year stint at the Cavendish, Perovic returned to U of
T. In 1997, at the age of 35, he became the head of the Department of
Materials Science and Engineering, the youngest department chair at
the university. Perovic also worked with U of T's vice president
of research, Heather Munroe-Blum, developing a university-wide series
of partnerships in nano-technology to increase grants and encourage
spin-off companies and other commercial opportunities. Then he had what
might be classified as a pedagogical epiphany. "I thought, ‘We
should be doing something like this same type of partnership on the
education front.' I realized we have all the ingredients for such
a program—a fantastic collection of departments necessary to make
it happen."
Perovic drew up a curriculum based on existing courses and developed
several new courses of his own. In 2001, the department began offering
a nanoengineering program at the undergraduate level. Students in the
engineering science division of the engineering faculty spend the first
two years taking a wide range of courses including math, physics, and
computing. They can then choose the nanoengineering specialization in
their final two years.
U of T's nanoengineering program is fed by seven departments
of the university: physics and chemistry, as well as five engineering
divisions- materials science, mechanical, chemical, computer and electrical,
and biomedical and biomaterials, the last of which provides a link with
the nearby medical faculty and neighboring teaching hospitals. Perovic,
who chairs the program in addition to his other duties, says that the
physical proximity of all the various departments and institutes makes
it easier to foster the interdisciplinary link that is central to a
field that depends upon a convergence and synthesis of different disciplines.
"Having some of the world's top people in chemistry, physics,
biomed, and material sciences near each other and all working in the
same direction was a key ingredient in helping us to do this quickly
and well."
He said he was a little nervous about the difficulty of the program
he put together. "The third year—the first year of the nanoengineering
specialization—is quite intense, with courses in electrical engineering
systems, hard-core organic chemistry, hard-core inorganic chemistry,
hard-core quantum mechanics, etc." It turns out he didn't
have to worry. "They are fantastic students—people often
accomplished in other areas like music and the arts. A lot of them don't
have to work night and day either. They depress the hell out of me,"
he chuckles.
In the summer, students intern at local nanotechnology-driven companies
and in the biomedical field, where Perovic says some of the most exciting
work in nanotechnology is going on. He points to recent nanotechnology
solutions used in the field of cancer therapy, including a molecule
made from 60 atoms of carbon—a soccer-ball-shaped structure called
a Buckey ball after geodesic dome pioneer Buckminster Fuller. Antibodies
that can attack cancer cells are attached onto the C-60 molecule, which
is then used as a vehicle to transport the antibodies through the bloodstream
to a specific site. "These are like smart bombs," says Perovic.
"Send them in, deploy them, and you have a very localized delivery
of the antibody to wipe out a tumor without ravaging all the other good
cells in the area as you do with radiation and chemotherapy."
Perovic says he sees his role as making these accomplishments better
known—not just in the scientific and engineering community but
to the general public as well. "We have to contribute to the field
while putting down any of the hype about it—and there's
a lot out there. The accomplishments are not celebrated, nowhere nearly
enough."
Those accomplishments, Perovic fully believes, will build from a trickle
into a tidal wave and prove truly revolutionary. "In the last
Industrial Revolution we learned how to make machines and manufacture
materials like steel using a nonscientific heat-it-and-beat-it approach.
Now, we're repeating the whole thing, learning how to manufacture,
but doing it on the nanoscale. We can see what we're doing, know
what we're doing, and we can orchestrate what we achieve. It's
exciting to be working in the field on the cusp of a new age."
Pierre Home-Douglas is a freelance writer based
in Montreal.
He can be reached at phomedouglas@asee.org.