From Molecules to Systems: Atoco’s CEO, Dr. Samer Taha, Featured in Forbes
In this Forbes Technology Council editorial, published on June 18, 2026, our CEO Dr. Samer Taha, describes the R&D methodology behind nanotechnology’s next big leap.
Nanotechnology has quietly progressed through three distinct generations, and the third is now reshaping how deep-tech R&D itself must be organized.
The first generation, dominant from the early 2000s into the 2010s, produced passive nanostructures, materials whose nanoscale architecture conferred enhanced but static properties. Carbon nanotubes are textbook examples for the first generation. The second generation, which we are still living in, introduced active nanostructures: materials engineered to respond dynamically to stimuli such as light, temperature or pH. Targeted drug-delivery vessels are a familiar example.
The third generation, emerging now, is fundamentally different. It is the era of nanosystems and integrated nanodevices; functional architectures in which one or more active nanomaterials are designed, integrated and orchestrated to deliver a system-level outcome. A lab-on-a-chip built around a precisely engineered active nanomaterial is one such device.
This shift sounds incremental. It is not. It changes what R&D organizations must be able to do.