Nanotechnology researchers with projects having possible application to needs created by the events of September 11 will be interested in Community of Science's(COS) new "Freedom Funds" database. The COS is only available to those researchers whose instituions are subscribers. Access to the Funding Opportunities database is limited to those from subscribing institutions and not to individuals as this editor discovered.

Freedom Funds highlights more than 18,000 funding opportunities related to security and anti-terrorism research. Drawn directly from COS Funding Opportunities, a database of over 400,000 individual research grants, this section features current public and private sector needs in the areas of national and international security, weapons and surveillance technology, health safety, disaster response, bioterrorism, international relations, Central Asian and Middle Eastern studies.

Community of Science, Inc., a spin-off of The Johns Hopkins University, facilitates the business of worldwide R&D. The company represents over $33 billion in unclaimed research grants, more than 1,300 universities and research institutions and nearly 500,000 scientists, scholars, and researchers along with the research they perform.

"Freedom Funds will fill a vital need in the research community at this time," said Glenn Krell, director for Research Proposal Development at the Illinois Institute for Technology. Krell added that his institution is currently developing a myriad of new technologies, including x-ray and sensing devices that will benefit from a resource like Freedom Funds. "I have been approached by a number of faculty looking to fund research addressing national needs related to the September 11th crisis. When I learned that there was no centralized place for finding this type of funding, I contacted COS and they were eager to help."

COS builds relevant web enabled knowledge management and alerting systems for universities, societies, corporations and governments to connect to information and resources. COS services include: COS Expertise, the database of detailed, first person profiles of scientists and scholars; COS Funding Opportunities, the largest inventory of currently available research grant information; COS Abstract Management System, an online publishing solution for universities and professional societies; and customized access to a range of professional reference databases including U.S. Patents, MEDLINE; AGRICOLA; GeoRef; and FedBizOpps, among others. For more information, www.cos.com.