K. ERIC DREXLER is a researcher, author, and policy advocate focused on emerging technologies and their consequences for the future. He pioneered studies of productive nanosystems and their products (the still-theoretical field originally termed “nanotechnology”). He has authored numerous technical publications on this topic as well as books including Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, which first introduced the basic concepts to a general audience, and Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation, an applied-physics analysis of advanced productive nanosystems.
He is presently Chief Technical Advisor of Nanorex, a company developing software for the design and simulation of molecular machine systems. In 1991 he received a doctoral degree in the field of molecular nanotechnology from MIT, the first degree of its kind.