• Question: do you use nanotechnology in your work?

    Asked by daviesl3 to Amit, Emily, Joanne, Martin, Paige on 16 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by laceyc.
    • Photo: Amit Pujari

      Amit Pujari answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      No, sorry daviesl3,
      I have no connection with nanotechology in my work. All I know is, it is very interesting and upcoming area!

    • Photo: Joanne Davies

      Joanne Davies answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      We meet again daviesI3. 🙂 I don’t use nanotechnology in my work at present and I know very little about it.

      It is a subject that interests me though, especially when it comes to nano foods that include healthy things and chocolate. 🙂

    • Photo: Emily Bullen

      Emily Bullen answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      Yes, we do.
      Once we are trialling the drugs on people they are generally made as tablets, as that is the most pleasant way (better than a horrible tasking liquid, or an injection).
      However, when we are trialling on animals we haven’t yet managed to develop that tablet, and also animals won’t tend to swallow them (have you ever tried to get your pet to swallow a tablet??).
      So, what we do is we sometimes have a “suspension” of nanoparticles. That means very small specs of solid (particles) that are floating in a liquid. The fact that they are very small means they dissolve better in the intestine, to get in the blood (which is where anything needs to go to do anything).

    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      Hey davies! YES!!!

      Many people use nanotechnology without even realizing it. Do you wear sunscreen at the beach? Then you have had nanoparticles made out of titania on your skin (don’t worry, they aren’t harmful! They can actually help clean the air of pollutants, too!).

      Nanotechnology is used in medicine, drug research (what I did/do), in sensors (even home pregnancy tests use gold nanoparticles!), in imaging devices (have you heard of MRI imaging?), and many other applications. Nanotechnology is used to create better solar panels, drug formulations like Emily talks about, and more.

    • Photo: Martin Wallace

      Martin Wallace answered on 19 Mar 2012:

      I’m afraid we don;t use any nano-technology at my work. We deal with a much bigger scale of engineering.
      Maybe in the future, though, we could develop some sort of nano-tech coating for the hospital beds, meaning they can clean themselves. This would be a great benefit to the health industry and mean that the risk of cross-contamination in hospitals is greatly reduced

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