Researcher Ralph Merkle says the market is on the rise. "A decade from
now I think there'll be serious research work, and rather major research work
focused on the development of an assembler," says Merkle.
According to Merkle, salaries in nanotechnology are tough to measure because
it's such a new field. "It's sort of like asking in the 1950s or '60s: 'What's
an average salary of computer scientists?' There is no such beast really,"
says Merkle.
Merkle says that funding could come from a variety of sources, including
Nobel Prizes, if you really want to go for it. "There'll continue to be government
money. We're also seeing a lot of private money flowing into the field, and
I think both of those sources will increase. Nobel Prizes are obviously something
that happens to a fairly small number of people.
"Basically, the Nobel Prizes will be passed out in physics and chemistry.
We've already seen Nobel Prizes awarded for the discovery of the scanning
probe microscope, for example, and that clearly is very instrumental in the
development of nanotechnology. We've seen Nobel Prizes going, for example,
to Rick Smalley for his research on buckyballs.
"There are so many areas, so many fields encompassed by nanotechnology,
that if your objective is to get a Nobel Prize, then I don't see any particular
problem," says Merkle.
Earnings and employment information from the U.S. Department of Labor is
not available for this field at this time.