I got to spend much of the day in some of the clean rooms, biotech labs, an aquarium, and chemistry labs where cutting edge technology is advancing through cooperation between NDSU and private businesses. For a geek like me, this is like being a kid in a candy store.

I was hoping I’d get the suit with the little plastic helmet on it, like Dr. Evil wore in the Austin Powers movies…then I could pretend I was in this Postal Service music video, one of my favorites of the 21st century.

It was fun watching the robotic equipment print templates for tiny circuit boards, while other robots would attach the components to the board, while techs would examine finished products under microscopes. There were other guys doing microscopic alignment of templates for extremely tiny circuitry, and tons of gadgets everywhere. One of the interesting items manufactured by Alien Technologies, one of the partners here, is RFID chips the size of a pepper flake! The work on nanotechnology is wild; for example, they’re working on these nano-IC’s (integrated circuits) that are so small, you can fit a bunch of them inside the “D” stamped on a Denver-minted US dime.

There was SO much cool stuff for a geek to see here, and it’s a shining example of the enormous effort our state government is making toward North Dakota’s future development in technology and industry. More to come…