BlackBerry Creator Lazaridis Applies $100 Million Into Nano Labs.

 Lazaridis, whose invention of the BlackBerry smartphone higher than a decade ago redefined the means people send e-mail, is drawing inspiration from the early days of computing pertaining to his next act.

Backed by means of his $100 million donation, your Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Heart opens tomorrow in Waterloo, Ontario, aiming to recreate the conditions that created AT&T Inc. ’s Bell Labs a hive of technology in the early 1960s and laid the groundwork for the success of Silicon Valley.

The new research center was designed to produce breakthroughs in the scientific discipline and technology of things approaching the size of an atom. It’s “absolutely” gonna be the Bell Labs on the 21st century, Lazaridis said yesterday in a telephone interview. “That reality got clearer and clearer to my opinion as we got closer on the ribbon-cutting. ”

Lazaridis, who resigned because chairman of struggling BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. (RIMM) inside January, says he’s now devoting the vast majority of his time to help obtain the Quantum-Nano Centre off the ground in order to form a cluster of cutting-edge research while using decade-old Institute for Quantum Research and Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, both founded with a total of greater than $250 million of his own money and extra funds he helped raise.

The facilities will probably be enough to lure the brightest minds within the field to Canada, Lazaridis mentioned.
No Mountains

“We can’t offer them ocean, beaches or mountain tops, but we can try and offer them the best environment, the most beneficial collaborators, the best equipment that would be conducive to them making the breakthroughs with their lifetime, ” Lazaridis said. “One the easiest way to describe this is we’re wanting to break the known laws of physics. ”

The technology Lazaridis is talking about was designed to redefine the boundaries of Moore’s Regulation, the principle -- associated having Intel Corp. (INTC) co-founder Gordon Moore -- that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles every 24 months. Quantum computing and nanotechnology would allow medicine to be delivered to individual cells, could create minute energy sources and might even produce self-healing materials that might be used in a nuclear power plant, he says.

“It’s getting more and more difficult to make smaller devices as we approach the size of an atom, but it’s also getting higher priced to build those devices, ” he / she said. “You know you’re at the limit when those two points happen. The only way you can break through those barriers is usually quantum computing. ”
Possible Purchases

While Lazaridis said he’s considering investments in nano and quantum engineering, he wouldn’t say when or the amount of he’ll invest. The 51-year-old nonetheless owns 29. 7 million stocks in RIM, which are value about $214 million, according to a April filing.

“I do have the money to invest in both angel and business capital, but I’m being very, incredibly strategic, ” he said.

While Waterloo has some local venture capital of which startups can tap, it lacks the billion of dollars in venture capital that investors are prepared to risk in Silicon Valley on local startups. That doesn’t faze Lazaridis, the son of Greek immigrants who immigrated to Canada being a boy and started RIM while still at the University of Waterloo in your 1970s.

“The venture capital will see its way to those individual entrepreneurs or companies which have been interested in commercializing these developments, ” he said.
Valley’s Root base

Bell Labs, founded in 1925 and after this part of Alcatel-Lucent, had its operations in Ny city and the New Jersey suburbs, an area that hasn’t had the oppertunity to seize the mantle of technological innovator held by California’s Silicon Area, home to Intel, Apple Inc. as well as Google Inc. Bell Labs alumni like William Shockley helped bring the study center’s innovations to the Western Coast.

In Waterloo, other companies are championing the growth on the technology industry as RIM continues to shrink, with users switching to devices from Apple and Samsung Electronics Co.

Desire2Learn Inc., a regional online-education software startup, raised $80 zillion in venture funding this calendar month from investors including Menlo Car park, California-based New Enterprise Associates Inc. Waterloo-based OpenText Corp., the 20-year-old maker of business application, saw revenue grow 17 pct to $1. 21 billion in its most current fiscal year and employs a lot more than 4, 500 workers worldwide.

The 2 provide a morale boost on the local economy as RIM reductions 5, 000 jobs to try and return to profitability. Chief Exec Officer Thorsten Heins, who took over in January, is relying upon a new lineup of cell phones, due next year, to opposite the company’s fortunes.

Lazaridis, who remains around the board of RIM and operates its innovation committee, says he / she still regularly consults with Heins, that he picked as his heir.

While he declined to say if he’s happier to be able to devote himself full-time to pure science and philanthropy instead of running RIM, he said he’s enjoying his new project.

“Never in my wildest aspirations did I think I would join in on this adventure, ” he mentioned. “I wouldn’t have it some other way. ”