Small is beautiful, says nano-technologist Ashutosh Sharma. The
things he builds under a microscope could one day give tiny cell
phone batteries, a cure for cancer which is why he has been
awarded the Infosys Science Prize for this year. "A nano-
technologist has nothing to do with the Tata Nano. But we do
work with very small things, things 10,000 times smaller than a
human hair," says Ashutosh Sharma. He says no tools exist for
things that are very small. But with electricity, pressure, heat
and chemistry, he can control how things take shape at a
microscopic level. He claims that what people like him do in
their labs, affects people every day. For example detergents
that remove stains better, paints that save walls from water,
adhesives that stick stronger, longer; they all have tiny little
particles they have engineered to have those special properties.
Professor Sharma perfected a new way of working with these tiny
particles and his work will soon spin off commercial products
that will touch each one of u