Entrepreneur and PhD physicist Aaron Santos suggests community college students and faculty pay attention to the intersection of micro and nanotechnologies with biotechnology, and the emergence of their use in sensors and other new devices.
In short, nanotechnology innovations are becoming more commercially viable in bioscience products.
“My prediction is that you’re going to see what happened with the programming and software startups that you saw popping up in the 90s. I’m predicting that you are going to see a similar effect with some of the biotechnologies that are coming out now,” he said.
He pointed to the CRISPR gene editing technique and the processes for coating DNA and other bio-molecules on to nanoparticles as examples of emerging technologies that are beginning to be used for genetic detection and differentiation of proteins.
Santos says the products that have emerged so far provide nice ways “to detect things like disease markers and genetic variations.”