The World’s First VR Platform For NanoEngineering

The concept of viewing the world with three-dimensional spatial images has for a long time mesmerized scientists, artists, cinematographers and other forward thinkers. Today the future in science and engineering has catapulted from the Stone Age into the twenty-first century thanks to Nanome, Inc.’s (and the world’s) first 3D virtual reality, VR, interface platform. This product enables scientists and engineers to collaborate on designs with nanoscale precision.

Nanoscience and NanoEngineering are the studies of unimaginably small objects that are measured in nanometers, a billionth of a meter. The use of nanotechnology gives new meaning to it’s a small, small world. To put it in perspective, there are about 100,000 nanometers in a piece of standard copy paper. Anything using individual atoms and molecules is building blocks in Nanotechnology.

In 1959, Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman envisioned the theoretical possibility of working with a nanoscale. The late physicist once stated the following:

I want to build a billion tiny factories, models of each other, which are manufacturing simultaneously. … The principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom. It is not an attempt to violate any laws; it is something, in principle, that can be done; but in practice, it has not been done because we are too big.

The next step in the world of creating models smaller than the human eye can see was unveiled.

Nanome co-founder Steven McCloskey is a member of the first graduating class of NanoEngineering at University of California San Diego (UCSD) in 2015. Frustrated by the lack of tools available to nanoengineers, he wondered how you work in the “one billionth of a meter” in each Nano design that is more efficient. Necessity is the mother of invention, and McCloskey and colleagues, including Ben Bratton, professor of visual arts at UCSD, set out to build the first visual 3D nanoscale application of molecules with carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen atoms on a virtual reality, VR, platform. The result: Nano-One was created.

McCloskey had invented a tool that helps design the devices that use the unique properties of nanoscale materials to create entirely new functionality and capabilities.

Putting it together on a VR platform for a mass STEM-user audience was the next step. Keita Funakawa joined McCloskey in this pursuit, and they have pushed the envelope past the use of the Oculus headset for three-dimensional interactions such as video games and hanging out on Facebook. Funakawa, a UCSD graduate with a B.S. in management science quantitative economics and a minor in digital/film production, has been coding since the ninth grade and watched weekly television at his family home in Japan. Funakawa states, “Japanese television has intense visual animation programs” that influenced him greatly. This stimulus, acquired during his early years, led to ideas for the VR-based platform.

Together McCloskey and Funakawa saw the future for solving NanoEngineering problems with 3D Virtual Reality and advancement of math. “Math is fundamental for everything,” Funakawa says. After the two entrepreneurs had introduced Nano-One, they followed with Calcflow, a tool for the efficient use of calculus in problem solving. Next, the McCloskey and Funakawa incorporated Nanome, Inc., in August 2016 and set up the two platforms on the Nanome website.

When you visit Nanome, Inc. at their work space in the UCSD Engineering Atkins building, you will find bright, talented men and women engineers, programmers and related scientists wearing Oculus headsets viewing program code and switching to see visual 3D VR on an enlarged computer screen. Kai Wang, Vice President of Software Development, greeted me into this new world with his Oculus headset atop his head.

I too put on a headset, and Nanome co-founders, McCloskey and Funakawa, led me through a 3D VR tour in nanoscale from one nanometer of small molecules, (10-9th) scale to 100 nanometers. With the headset on, I viewed Nano-Pro, the VR software that a Big Pharma customer are using as a tool in the monitoring of nicotine addiction and Dr. Zoran Radić, Ph.D., associate professor from UCSD Skaggs School of Pharmacy, for research and teaching in visualization of drug-macromolecule interactions. Dr. Radić says he has been “searching for months” for a 3D VR platform now provided by Nanome, Inc.

Once I had a handset in each hand, I was able to point in “Iron Man” fashion to the line of light with my handset to see different categories, such as Dini theorem, on the screen, or to enlarge the visual, move the atoms on the screen, or even to place my head within the 3D molecules.

McCloskey explained that he had played video games since early childhood and that some of that experience acted as inspiration. On a similar note, Funakawa wanted to create that “awesome” visual experience of immersive visual animation as a means to viewing scientific development, doing research, and teaching. They both agreed humans connect emotionally to 3D and visual reality.

McCloskey discussed communication’s history of evolution from old-school limits of the one-dimensional language of words, ink on the paper two-dimensional level, 3D computer images at the three-dimensional level, and, now, McCloskey and Funakawa’s new dimension, the “holy grail” of immersion into 3D virtual reality. Both co-founders believe that the future is holographic communication. The world of “Avatar,” they believe, is the next step in the evolution of technology utilizing 3D visual imagery.

As a teaching tool for the vector fields, in three-dimensional Euclidean space, Nanome, Inc., also offers a second product, Calcflow—a calculus 3D VR for vector calculus. McCloskey and Funakawa adhere to math as the answer to communication “lost in translation” of the words in different cultures and languages. As an example, Funakawa told me that when he first learned of the saying, “a bird in hand,” he didn’t understand what it meant. It made no sense to him, but math, he says, can convey the pure meaning of space, and he can build a model. Math always makes it a reality because math is precise.

Funakawa explains, “Nano-One is our consumer facing nerfed/lite version that only includes the just chemical building tool without the protein visualizer of Nano-Pro.” The protein visualizer is critical for professional drug designers and therefore purchased by academic researchers, such as Dr. Zoran Radić, and Big Pharma clients. Funakawa added, “The cool thing is that Nano-One is still very useful for chemists and Nano engineers who just want to model small molecules.”

With Nano-One, UCSD has stepped into the twenty-first century with their first virtual reality lab. The lab includes twenty headsets for students and professors to use to enhance their studies, research, and development. McCloskey and Funakawa also teach a class in VR at UCSD.

The opportunities for using 3D VR as a math tool are endless. Users simply put on the headset, hold the hand guides and press the buttons with their index and middle fingers, and they can be confident that the visual representations they render will be mathematically accurate. This means that scientists, researchers, professors, students and future developers can collaborate efficiently and work at the maximum level of resources available to create and solve problems that address the issues of today.

Nanome, Inc., has joined a community of members with shared ideas, and it is a step toward a unified mathematical database that can be distributed and provide compensation. Part two of the Nanome, Inc., story will present the next chapter for Nanome’s 3D VR application, including the application of blockchain smart contract.