| Danville goes
nano
Virginia Business
June 2004
Is
smaller better? Danville sure hopes
so. The city announced in April that it is teaming up
with Blacksburg-based Luna Innovations
to open one of the country’s first facilities
for manufacturing nanomaterials — resources so
tiny that they require manipulation on a molecular or
atomic scale. City officials hope that the opportunity
will help speed the city’s transition from its
old tobacco and textiles economy to a new high-tech
one. “You’re talking about some extremely
high-paying jobs,” Danville city manager Jerry
Gwaltney said of the venture.
The project scope will reach over $20 million within
five years and is expected to involve the creation of
54 jobs in the next three years — with the hope
of hundreds and even thousands more over the long term.
Luna Innovations is renovating a former three-story
tobacco warehouse and expects to open this fall.
Nanotechnology is considered the next big thing in technological
advancement. It will help create new materials such
as ultra-strong and ultra-light materials, alternative
energy sources, more powerful computers and radiopharmaceuticals
able to accurately target cancer cells. The National
Science Foundation expects the technology to have a
$1 trillion impact on the global economy in the next
decade.
Luna Innovations is banking on the Danville facility
to produce cost-effective, high-volume nanomaterials
for such military and commercial applications as textile
composites, armor coatings, covert surveillance and
pharmaceuticals. Up to now, these materials have only
been available in small quantities.
“There’s been a lot of fantastic research
done on nanotechnology, but we’re trying to move
to the place where you can actually make real products,”
says Charlie Gause, director of the Nanomaterials Group
at Luna Innovations and vice president of the Danville
Division. “We think that a lot more people—especially
on the research side—would work with these materials
in terms of real-world applications if they were more
readily available at a lower cost.”
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