Newswise UALR - The University of Arkansas at Little Rock - has opened its new home for the Center for Integrative Nanotechnology Sciences. The five-story, $15 million building is a working symbol of Arkansas major stake in atomic-sized technology that will make a giant difference to the future of central Little Rock.

Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe, U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, and U.S. Congressman Tim Griffin were on hand for the May 2 opening ceremonies, citing the centers mission to take discoveries in the lab and turn them into new products, new businesses, and new jobs.

We no longer have to take a backseat to any state in the nation,Gov. Beebe said. The United States has invested more than any other nation in nanotechnology, and Arkansas has kept pace. We are one of the few states in the nation where it is really happening.

The new center combines three major roles of the university education, research, and economic development to recruit and inspire a generation of scientists, nurture their research, and apply it to create new marketable products that launch new businesses and create new jobs for Arkansas.

What we are doing here is quite unique. It is to combine education with research and economic development, said Dr. Alexandru Biris,director of the new center and the UALR Sturgis Chair inNanotechnology.Students from the high school to the post-doctoral level are already interacting with researchers and representatives of local companies to find answers and expand the understanding of how the properties of elements behave at the atomic scale and apply knowledge to development new products, enterprises, and jobs.

We are trying to grow the next generation of scientists in Arkansas,Biris said. We are taking students we have met and turning them into scientists, doctors, researchers highly educated individuals(without whom) it will be very difficult to advance economically.

Scientists and students at the new UALR center are wrapping a few atoms of gold in a graphite nanotube a few atoms thick to hunt and kill cancer cells without affecting healthy tissue. Working with colleagues at the cross-town sister school, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, they already have succeeded with rats.

Although she is only a freshman, Natasha Sra of Cherokee Village in northeast Arkansas, is learning and discovering along with doctors and post-docs on the project.

She never heard of nanotechnology before she enrolled in the ArkansasSchool for Science, Mathematics, and the Arts and her teacher pointed her to a summer program for high schoolers at the UALR nanotechnology center. Now a freshman at UALR, the chemistry and biology major is working on novel research on how low-levels frequency on nano particles affect breast cancer cells.

The center also offers its research assistance and lab facilities to local companies, making locating and expanding businesses in centralArkansas more attractive to high-tech firms.

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New Nanotechnology Center Opens in Little Rock