ATLANTA – The state famous for peanuts and peaches wants to lead the nation in the development of nanotechnology, making complex devices smaller than a grain of sand.
Professor Uzi Landman heads a program at Georgia Tech (search) where researchers are trying to build microscopic devices that may one day be capable of restoring damaged nerves or destroying individual cancer cells.
"They should have a sensing capability, identifying the cell, attacking the cell and not damaging the environment," Landman said. "That's one use. This will change completely the nature of medicine."
The school's nanotechnology program has been boosted by an anonymous donation of $36 million and the state of Georgia has promised an additional investment of $45 million.
"Our dreams are that Georgia will lead the nanotechnology manufacturing revolution in bringing the research from the laboratory into commercial production," said Gov. Sonny Perdue (search). "That's the economic benefit that we see in jobs and producing new products that we can not even imagine yet."
Landman said it will take several years to perfect "commercial" uses of nanotechnology. But he predicts the science will lead to major improvements in everything from the way plastic wrap preserves food to the storage of information.
"We will go away from these laptops," he said. "We will go away from the big machines. We will probably wear all the information that we ever need to know on a watch."
Go to the video box at the top of this story to watch a report by Fox News' Jonathan Serrie.
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