Is nanotechnology - the science of manipulating atoms and molecules on a millionth-of-a-millimetre scale - just a buzzword or is real progress actually being made? "We're past the point of getting by solely on the promise of nanotechnology," says Doug Perovic, chair of U of T's Materials Science and Engineering department and director of the world's first undergraduate nanoengineering program. "After all the talk, society is asking to see some results." Those results are beginning to take shape. This issue of Edge looks at seven of the hundreds of researchers at U of T who are using nanotechnology in such areas as detecting early-stage cancers, creating antifraud identification, and building faster semiconductors that will revolutionize computing.