Our Vision
Our vision for the IKI at BGU is to establish a center of world-class scientific research through the development of nanotechnologies.
This is realized by application of nanoscience and nanotechnology – thereby benefiting the Negev, the State of Israel, and society as a whole .
Our Mission
To promote, enable and support innovative nanoscale research and education at BGU.
The IKI :
✔ Recruits and supports leading researchers;
✔ Attracts excellent students to this field;
✔ Establishes and operates the necessary research infrastructure;
✔ Promotes industry-academia interactions to focus and implement the research;
✔ Develops interdisciplinary research interactions through seminars and workshops;
✔ Raises the necessary funding for the execution of its mission.
Nanotechnology at BGU
Nanotechnology is concerned with designing and building materials and structures with molecular and atomic precision, at dimensions ranging from sub-nanometer to sub-micron. Its impact ranges from nano-electronics and bioengineering to different fields and applications that rely on phenomena such as molecular recognition, film and interface stabilization, chemical micro-reaction control, and fabrication of nano-machines and nano-structures.
Nanoscience aims to develop an understanding of the scale dependent properties of complex systems (natural as well as man-made). By its nature, nanoscience and nanotechnology are interdisciplinary. The skills required for quality research are based on knowledge acquired in traditional disciplines of physics, chemistry, material science and engineering, molecular-biology and biochemistry. Often it is the synergetic interactions among scientists with different backgrounds that lead to progress and achievements. If you want to read more about nanotechnology, we recommend the following website of the US National Nanotechnology Initiative
In 2007, the Israeli Government decided to establish the area of nanoscience as a national priority project with the goal of creating research infrastructure at six universities that will be the basis for nano industries in Israel. Founded in 2006, the Ilse Katz Institute for Nano-Science and Technology (IKI) at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) operates under the Israeli National Nanotechnology Initiative (INNI). The IKI brings under one roof a community of scientists working on aspects of the fields that are related to the understanding and manipulation of matter at reduced dimensionality. Cutting edge research in nanotechnology is carried out at the IKI in a variety of areas such as energy conversion and storage, nano-photonics, nano-biotechnology, nano-medicine, biophysics, water purification and desalination, biological and chemical sensing, quantum science and technology, thin films and nano-materials synthesis, characterization and interactions. For supporting the above-mentioned research, the IKI provides state-of-the-art facilities for nano-scale fabrication and characterization to the benefit of the entire research community in the Negev.
Being part of BGU, we believe that a major role of the institute is education of scientists and engineers as well as transfer of knowledge to the broader community. We thus aim to offer and support a unique and competitive interdisciplinary program for graduate studies, as well as a double major undergraduate program in nanotechnology.
