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Partners

The ISN's mission is complex and difficult—and it won't be solved by cutting-edge nanoscience alone. MIT has two key partners who share not only a passion for the ISN mission, but responsbility for achieving it.

U.S. Army
The Army is not only a sponsor, but a key partner. The ISN is sponsored through the U.S. Army Research Office (ARO), located in Durham, North Carolina. MIT scientists work closely with scientists from the ARO and other science and technology communities within the DoD to exchange ideas and share experience with what does and doesn't work. The Army also keeps the ISN in contact with the customer—the individual soldier. Several times a year, MIT researchers travel to Army bases to observe soldiers in training, talk with them one-on-one, and see how current equipment works. It's also a chance to get a first-hand taste of the soldier's challenges, by wearing bulky night-vision goggles or carrying a 40-pound rucksack for an hour. The ISN went on one such field excursion to Ft. Polk, Louisiana, in January 2003.

Industry
A second key ISN partner is private industry. Turning laboratory innovations into real products, and scaling them up for affordable manufacture in the hundreds of thousands, requires the special expertise of companies both big and small. The ISN has three founding industrial partners—Raytheon, DuPont, and Partners Healthcare—and is recruiting additional partners who share its vision for the soldier. Membership in the ISN Industry Consortium is open to companies who provide a critical core competency for ISN research and an appropriate level of cost-sharing.

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