Georgia Tech's Ambassador of Nano

Daniel Moore, Georgia Tech nanotech Ph.D. candidate and blogger recently gave a successful talk to the Druid Hills Civitan Club. Judging from the prepared version (Word doc) of his talk, Moore did a masterful (or, even doctoral) job of balancing the long-term promises of nanotech with today's realities and touching on some of the ethical and societal concerns in the news these days.

Fearing my own upcoming adventure in public speaking, I asked him to tell me how the audience received his talk. Here's what Moore wrote:

The talk went really well. After the first paragraph or so, I settled into it and just kept rolling. There were about 40-50 people there and they had a ton of questions afterwards (though none too tough) about nanoassemblers, the nanomedical technology, and even about the nanopants (I hope you don’t mind, but I borrowed your line saying that we need to work on the nanopants, but the cancer detection is pretty cool). And it is always fun to get away from the everyday nano-work and focus on big picture, almost nanoscifi type of stuff. The chorus of “wow” that I would get when I would describe some things helps to remind me why I’m actually doing this stuff.

Thank you for your work, Daniel, and happy 25th birthday! You've accomplished more at 25 than I have at "pushin' 40." When I was 25, I was covering school board and city council meetings for the Haverhill Gazette in Massachusetts. I did cover a NIMBY ("not in my backyard)" issue or two involving plans for a local trash incinerator. The issue? Risk from smokestack emissions. It was my first stab at coverage of issues involving the environment, risk and public fear. I hadn't realized then that it was a dress rehearsal for my nano-writing career.

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