Davis gives grant to UCLA-UCSB project
By Daily Bruin Staff
Dec. 10, 2000 9:00 p.m.
 NICOLE MILLER/Daily Bruin Chancellor Albert
Carnesale (left) and UCSB Chancellor Henry
Yang listen as Gov. Gray Davis presides over a
teleconference.
By Marcelle Richards
Daily Bruin Contributor
The California NanoSystems Institute, a joint enterprise between
UCLA and UC Santa Barbara, landed a victory Thursday when Gov. Gray
Davis declared the project one of three winners of a $100 million
state-funded research grant.
“I hope for not one, but three world class science
industries,” Davis said. “It is my hope we can
collaborate academia and industry, a collaboration between
chancellors and investors.”
Reaping the benefits of corporate support with UCLA are UC San
Diego and UC San Francisco, who also won $100 million grants each.
UC Berkeley is the fourth site set in Davis’ agenda next
year.
The surge of funding will ignite new innovations that will
revolutionize society, Davis said.
Imagine a light bulb that lasts forever on one tenth the energy
currently required or medicines that zero in on the molecular
imperfections that cause disease rather than on the symptoms
themselves. While these projects may seem to be mere figments of
imagination, nanosystems research is in the process of making these
innovations a reality in the near future.
A nanometer equates to the width of a strand of hair, split
10,000 times. The ability to work at such a small scale ““ the
smallest thus far ““ has allowed scientists to develop highly
specialized, and more advanced, innovations than any other
preceding form of technology.
Nanosystems allow innovators to better engineer products due to
the minute scale at which the innovations are manufactured.
Products have historically been developed by breaking a larger
matter into smaller parts, whereas the nanosystem approach allows
for atom by atom construction to create a larger whole.
Instead of restructuring an already existing product,
nanosystems allow scientists to directly manipulate the building
blocks of products to allow for higher precision, hence a
“bottom-up” approach.
“Bottom-up or biologically-inspired fabrication is at the
heart of nanotechnology,” said James Heath, UCLA chemistry
professor and co-director of the institute. “This approach to
manufacturing has huge ramifications and will transform all
industries, from high technology to transportation to
medicine.”
The concept of working at the nanometer scale drew more than 30
corporate partners who recognized the institute’s potential
to significantly boost California’s economy.
Davis initially hoped for a 2-1 match at the local, federal and
private sector, though the results exceeded his goals with a near
3-1 match from the private sector.
“In terms of this investment and the overall scale of the
investment, it’s unprecedented,” said Hilary McLean,
deputy press secretary for the governor.
Chancellor Albert Carnesale said he does not foresee any
complications between UCLA and their investors concerning the
preservation of academic integrity at the university.
Each corporate partnership is based on individual terms of
sponsorship. Davis used the Stanford Silicon Valley project as a
model for such relations in which the Palo Alto university
partnered with Silicon Valley technology corporations to back
research and funding.
Economically, the support from these companies create a viable
market for the products and new positions in the job market, Davis
said.
“The institute will draw on the interdisciplinary
strengths of our two campuses, on our common vision that
developments in the science and technology of nanosystems will be
the basis for revolutionary advances in fields as diverse as
computation, healthcare technology and multimedia art and
entertainment,” said UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang.
“These advances will help fuel our economy and profoundly
improve the quality of life in our society over the next decade and
beyond,” he said.
The 120,000 square foot UCLA site will be in the Court of
Sciences, between Boelter Hall and parking structure 9, where
shared facilities will be made available for scientists and
investment partners to design and conduct experiments.
“No state has embarked on the same course ““ our
sites have been chosen, the collaborations have (already) been
made,” Davis said. “We’re out ahead in this
race.”
The institute expects to create new curriculum within the next
year for graduate and undergraduate students, with emphasis on
working from a common vocabulary to breach all disciplines
together, Heath said.
“We’re trying to forge a new educational
paradigm,” said Martha Krebs, the institute’s founding
director. “There is a common set of tools, the underlying
theme is structuring material at the nanoscale. The challenge for
our institute is to create and sustain the many partnerships needed
to carry out nanosystems research.”
The collaboration of scientific and corporate parties seeks to
create jobs and train a new generation of scientists and engineers,
while extending the educational focus to younger adults and
children as well.
Hosting tours of the institute, sponsoring high school
internships and displaying exhibits at local science-based museums
are ways the institute hopes to build public awareness and reach
out to younger generations.
“Some critics accuse me of not thinking big,” Davis
said. “I think today I’ve answered that
call.”
