Assessment of Progress - Research Progress on Environmental Health and Safety Aspects of Engineered Nanomaterials - page 21

BOX 3-2 Status of Indicators of Progress in Implementation (NRC 2012, p. 183)
Enhancing Interagency Coordination
 Progress toward establishing a mechanism to ensure sufficient management and budgetary authority to
develop and implement an EHS research strategy among NNI agencies
 Extent to which the NNCO is annually identifying funding needs for interagency collaboration on critical
high-priority research
Providing for Stakeholder Engagement in the Research Strategy
 Progress toward actively engaging diverse stakeholders in a continuing manner in all aspects of strategy
development, implementation, and revision
Conducting and Communicating the Results of Research Funded Through Public-Private Partnerships
 Progress toward establishment of effective public-private partnerships, as measured by such steps as
completion of partnership agreements, issuance of requests for proposal, and establishment of a sound
governance structure
Managing Potential Conflicts of Interest
 Progress toward achieving a clear separation in management and budgetary authority and accountability
between the functions of developing and promoting applications of nanotechnology and understanding and
assessing its potential health and environmental implications
 Continued separate tracking and reporting of EHS research activities and funding distinct from those for
other, more basic or application-oriented research
INDICATORS OF RESEARCH PROGRESS
Adaptive Research and Knowledge for Accelerating Research Progress and
Providing Rapid Feedback to Advance the Research
In the committee's 2012 report (NRC 2012), the first set of research priorities involved
establishing an adaptive infrastructure for research and knowledge generation to accelerate and advance
EHS nanotechnology research. The components of this infrastructure include study and reference
materials; nanomaterial libraries; instruments and methods for measuring nanomaterials and their
transformations; methods or assays to quantify the effects of nanomaterials; databases, ontologies, and
tools for sharing research results; and models to uncover relationships among the data. Progress toward
those short-term and medium-term research priorities ranged from green for detecting and characterizing
engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) in relatively well-characterized media to yellow for development of
libraries of well-characterized ENMs, development of methods for quantifying effects of ENMs in
experimental systems, and the extent of joining of existing databases, including the elements of an
informatics infrastructure. It is expected that the integrated components of the infrastructure will need to
be continuously improved to adapt to the growing needs of the research enterprise.
 Extent of development of libraries of well-characterized nanomaterials, including those
prevalent in commerce and reference and standard materials