The Center for the Environmental Implications of NanoTechnology (CEINT) is dedicated to elucidating the relationship between a vast array of nanomaterials — from natural, to manufactured, to those produced incidentally by human activities — and their potential environmental exposure, biological effects, and ecological consequences.
Headquartered at Duke University, CEINT is a collaboration between Duke, Carnegie Mellon University, Howard University, and Virginia Tech and investigators from the University of Kentucky and Stanford University. CEINT academic collaborations in the US also include on-going activities coordinated with faculty at Clemson, North Carolina State, UCLA, and Purdue universities.
Created in 2008 with funding from the National Science Foundation and the US Environmental Protection Agency, the CEINT performs fundamental research on the behavior of nano-scale materials in ecosystems that will provide guidance in assessing existing and future concerns surrounding the environmental implications of nanomaterials.