UC Santa Barbara faculty members and colleagues from other universities within the UC system will play key roles in a five-year, $24 million nanotechnology risk-assessment project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The UC Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (UC CEIN) will conduct the nation’s first such large-scale studies of the potential ecological effects of nanomaterial forms.

Headquartered at UCLA, the UC CEIN will have as its two pillars teams of researchers at UCLA and UCSB. UCLA professor Andre Nel, who will serve as center director, said of the collaboration, “I look forward to interacting with the distinguished faculty at UCSB on a nationally important and exciting endeavor that reflects the excellent environmental science at UCSB.”

Arturo Keller, professor in the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, will be the associate director, working in collaboration with other UCSB faculty members. Keller will work with Patricia Holden, a Bren professor; Hunter Lenihan, Bren associate professor; Josh Schimel, environmental studies professor and chair; William Freudenburg, environmental studies professor; and Barbara Herr Harthorn, associate professor of feminist studies and director of UCSB’s Center for Nanotechnology in Society.

Other UCSB project researchers include Roger Nisbet, professor and vice chair of ecology, evolution, and marine biology; Bradley Cardinale, assistant professor of ecology, evolution, and marine biology; and Galen Stucky, professor of chemistry, biochemistry, and materials.

“The NSF and the EPA jointly initiated this research program because the government has too little scientific basis to determine regulatory policy in this area right now,” said UCSB Vice Chancellor of Research Michael Witherell. “A powerful team of researchers from UCLA and UCSB developed a compelling proposal showing how they would cover the broad landscape of research issues.”

Funding for the center is part of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), a multi-agency federal program created to encourage development of nanotechnology in the U.S. economy.

“It’s great seeing the Bren School and UCSB so well represented in this important project,” said Bren School Dean Ernst von Weizsäcker. “As a practical, solution-focused collaboration involving cooperation across several disciplines, the UC CEIN is a perfect example of the best kind of environmental science and research.”

Harthorn, who will lead one of the project’s Integrated Research Groups, said, “The new centers represent a promising step toward U.S. development of much-needed systematic knowledge about the environmental toxicology, ecology, and bioaccumulation of nanoparticles. Characterization of the hazards — and, eventually, potential for exposures — associated with nanomaterial development and incorporation in other products is an essential next step in the responsible development of nanotechnologies.”

The collaboration will also include researchers at UC Davis, UC Riverside, Columbia University, Germany’s University of Bremen, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and the University of British Columbia.