The Center's multidisciplinary research brings together participants at Harvard, MIT and UC Santa Barbara in the fields of Chemistry, Medicine, Physics, Applied Physics and Materials. The Center maintains close collaborations with the Sandia National Laboratory and the Brookhaven National Laboratory, and active international collaborations with Delft University of Technology, the University of Basel, and the University of Tokyo. A visitor program supports travel for students, faculty, and staff between these institutions to encourage collaborative research and the use of shared facilities.

Center for Nanoscale Systems (CNS) is a major investment by Harvard to promote and aid multidisciplinary research in nanoscience and technology by students and faculty from departments including Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Physics, and the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences. (CNS was formally named the Center for Imaging and Mesoscale Structures, or CIMS.). The aim of CNS is to create and maintain the major facilities that are needed to carry out research on nanoscale objects and systems; these facilities are available to all of the NSEC participants. CNS technical staff install and maintain the instruments, and train students in their use. Current CNS facilities include two cleanrooms in McKay Laboratory, one for soft lithography and one for nanofabrication, and imaging facilities for SEM, TEM and STEM electron microscopy in McKay and in Mallinckrodt. Recently Harvard and UC Santa Barbara became part of the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN), a group of thirteen Universities funded by the NSF to provide facilities for outside users. The focuses of Harvard's NNIN node are software for simulations of electrons in nanostructures and soft lithography.