Atomistix has just expanded to the U.S. at the Innovation Center Denmark in Palo Alto, not far from Foresight. I missed their open house on September 28, but I see that their CEO Thomas Magnussen explained the value of computational modeling in nanotechnology:
Over time, the price of nanotechnology experimentation has gone up while the cost of modeling has dropped dramatically. Based on calculations from Dow Chemical, Magnussen now estimates that a typical experiment costs 150,000 USD versus 150 USD for the same experiment conducted in virtual reality.
Sounds good to me. Perhaps one of our readers can explain the differences between the Atomistix product and the Nanorex product, often mentioned in this blog.
Meanwhile, they’re saving a ton of money over at Georgia Tech: Also on September 28 was another event in nanotech computer modeing, the publication in the Journal of Physical Chemistry — a top chemistry journal — of the paper “High-level Ab Initio Studies of Hydrogen Abstraction from Prototype Hydrocarbon Systems” by Berhane Temelso, C. David Sherrill, Ralph C. Merkle, and Robert A. Freitas Jr.
For his work on this paper, Temelso won this year’s Foresight Distinguished Student Award. A team to watch on the pathway to mechanosynthesis. —Christine
