Words from the editor

It is a pleasure for me to present to you the first issue of nanonews, our new electronic newsletter. nanonews will be published twice a year. It will briefly summarize the major highlights of the past months, introduce members of the NCCR and will give an outlook on what lies ahead. Please help to make nanonews interesting reading for NCCR members as well as for outsiders by continuously providing information that should be published.

The year 2003 started with good news for some NCCR scientists. Concentris GmbH and SwissProbe AG, two start-up companies founded by NCCR members, won the Swiss Technology Award 2003; Sylvia Schintke received the SPG Award for Applied Physics; Bianca Hermann received a call to the LMU Munich, and a number of students successfully passed their diplomas and PhD exams. Congratulations to all of them and to all who supported their research.

In May, we saw the second Site Visit of the Review Panel and we just received the official feedback from the Swiss National Science Foundation. The Review Panel was impressed by what has been achieved in science, education and in the developing the aspects of interdisciplinarity in our second year. It became clear that our NCCR is an excellent interdisciplinary centre, unique in the world. Nevertheless, there are certain areas for improvement. The management team and the project leaders will work on these topics in the coming months.

With the closing summer term, the first year for the newly established NanoCurriculum is coming to an end. In this issue of nanonews some students share their opinion about their first year in this unique interdisciplinary education program. During the summer term 2003 we also had a number of famous and interesting guests in our recently established NanoColloquium. I am looking forward to the next series of talks, and I am sure that in the future the NanoColloquium will become even more popular among students and members of the NCCR. In the coming fall, we will also host the third Swiss/US-Nanoforum and we will participate in the Nanoevent 2003 in St. Gallen - all excellent opportunities to exchange and discuss ideas with colleagues and to present our NCCR to the outside world. I hope that you will use these chances for interaction and I wish you a nice rest of the summer and a good start into the winter term.

Yours sincerely,



Hans-Joachim Güntherodt