Roco, Mihail

Mihail (“Mike”) C. Roco is the founding chair of the National Science and Technology Council's subcommittee on Nanoscale Science, Engineering, and Technology (NSET) and the Senior Advisor for Nanotechnology at the National Science Foundation (NSF). As the architect of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), Roco is recognized as the United States' most vocal and influential advocate for federal funding of nanotechnology research and development. In 2009, he had 13 inventions to his credit and had published more than 200 articles and 16 books. Roco lectures and publishes extensively on the importance of nanotechnology to the United States' economy and in addressing global concerns such as health disparities and sustainable development. In 2003, Forbes recognized Roco as the most powerful individual in nanotechnology in the United States.

Roco was born in 1947 in Bucharest, Romania. He worked as a mechanical engineer before relocating to the United States in 1980. He was a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Kentucky from 1981 to 1995, and held visiting professorships at the California Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, To-hoku University in Japan, and Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He has said that he began thinking about how to organize a new national scientific research and development program in the 1980s. He joined the National Science Foundation in 1990, where he created a program to investigate nanoparticles.

[Page 681]

Mihail (“Mike”) C. Roco was the key architect of the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative.

In 1997, Roco organized a workshop with the World Technology Evaluation Center (WTEC) to discuss nanotechnology research worldwide. During the workshop, Roco predicted that nanotechnology would be an important technology for the 21st century. The WTEC report noted the need for interagency collaboration, and in 1998, Roco formed the Interagency Working Group on Nanoscience, Engineering, and Technology (IWGN) under the National Science and Technology Council that President Bill Clinton had established in 1993. The IWGN became the National Nanotechnology Initiative, and in 1999 Roco presented the proposal for a $500 million federal investment in nanotechnology to the Clinton administration. Roco received the 2007 National Materials Advancement Award from the Federation of Materials Societies for his influential role in obtaining government, industry, and academic support worldwide for nanotechnology.

Roco has said that his goals for the NNI include realizing the rapid benefits of nanotechnology, strengthening collaboration between the NNI agencies, and addressing social implications of nanotechnologies. He has characterized social implications of nanotechnologies as maintaining U.S. global competitiveness through preparation of a nanotechnology workforce and addressing public concerns through education. In 200,1 he predicted that the United States will need a nanotechnology workforce of 800,000 by 2010–15.

Along with coauthor William Bainbridge, Roco has published six frequently cited reports on societal implications of nanotechnology. Roco is a strong advocate for including social scientists and humanities scholars in discussions of how to ensure that the benefits of nanotechnology are realized, and has said that social and ethical implications of nanotechnology (SEIN) research will help promote the success of the NNI.

Roco has been criticized by some scholars in rhetoric and philosophy of science for using hyperbole to talk about the future of nanotechnology, appealing to fear and nationalism, having a limited view of the role of SEIN research, and avoiding debate about controversial technologies by talking about them as if they already exist. The first criticism is based on Roco's frequent claims that nanotechnology will usher in the world's next industrial revolution. Like futurist Ray Kurzweil, Roco is an advocate for rapid research and development of nanotechnologies, arguing that delaying research will delay benefits and jeopardize both the United States' competitive edge and national security, thus leading to the second criticism. Roco's characterization of the function of SEIN research as promotion of the NNI led to the criticism that he views SEIN research as serving a public relations function for the NNI rather than serious independent research that contributes to policy decisions. The fourth criticism is based on language that Roco and coauthor Bainbridge used in their 2001 and 2003 reports on SEIN that implied that human enhancement through nanotechnology was already feasible.

...