The PITTCON 2007 is now history. The organizers were not publicizing the attendance figures as they usually have done, hence I have concluded, based on that and also, traffic in the exhibition to mean attendance was “down” from last year. Certainly there seemed to be more than the normal number of “empty” booths, suggesting last minute cancellations.

But on Sunday, I had the opportunity to attend the Opening Session which included a Plenary Lecture by Dr. Charles M. Lieber, The Mark Hyman Jr. Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and Professor in the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University. The title of his talk was “Nanowire Nanoelectronic Devices for Detection of and Interfacing to Biological Systems”.

Now this is superb research and anyone having a chance to hear Prof. Lieber will not quickly forget his presentation and what they learn.

But there is something else that came across to me: Prof. Lieber and his group are working at the forefront of research on nanowires and nanotubes, and their work involves intimate knowledge of biological interactions at the nanoscale, and in addition, work at the cutting edge of biological research and chemical sensing. Naturally, SEM
and TEM were critically needed tools to study and characterize the structures they were fabricating. And it looked like they were using some MEMS methodologies to produce some of their sensor structures. But what struck me as being the most amazing is how so many of the traditional barriers that define materials science, biological science, chemistry, physics, and perhaps are few other disciplines have so quickly disappeared. The point is, I don’t know how one would classify the work being done by Prof. Lieber and his group in traditional terms.

This also suggests that those scientists having the greatest potential for profound discoveries in the future will be those who know as much about materials science as they do about life science and vice versa. Perhaps the way of the future will not be along the lines of classical chemistry, physics, biology, etc. departments but structured more along the lines of multidisciplinary departments. If I am right about this, then this surely does suggest that any life science researcher, to stay ahead of their peers, will need to become an expert in materials science and vice versa.

I can’t help but think about the time of my own graduate days when I viewed myself as being in materials science and computer science was like another world. In those days and in my world, there were materials science people and there were computer science people. Had I been able to predict the merging of these fields, that one day one could not do cutting edge materials science and without having a good computer science background, perhaps some of my earlier choices in course electives might have been different.

I think the merging of disciplines is already happening at breakneck speed, and those wanting to stay at the forefront of their respective fields will have to learn the other technologies they don’t already know.

MicroChuck