Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have secured another $6.1 million grant to keep asking the big questions about very small things.

UCSB is well known for its nanotechnology research. It splits the California NanoSystems Institute with UCLA, and researchers at its Center for Nanomedicine have already made the cover of Science, one of the most influential scientific journals. Researchers and professors from UCSB have started some of the nanotech industry’s most influential companies, including Digital Instruments in Goleta, now a part of Bruker Corp.

But less well known is the fact that UCSB is also researching just about everything else about nanotechnology: its history in academia, government and business; its economic impacts; how the public perceives it; and how it might impact the environment as it makes its way into more and more everyday products.

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