SEEKING FUTURE SHOCK: UCI Plans Building to Study New Technology
By CHRIS CZIBORR
The University of California, Irvine, plans to break ground in the spring on a $54 million, 120,000-square-foot building set to house researchers and students looking into wireless communications and other advanced technology.
“We’re ready to take in construction bids,” said Peter Rentzepis, director of the program at UCI. “The groundbreaking is slated for spring and everything will be ready within two years of that.”
The building is set to include research laboratories, offices and conference facilities. About 16,000 square feet of space is set to go toward specialized laboratories, including a clean room for nanotechnology work.
The project is part of the California Institute for Tele-communications and Infor-mation Technology,a state-funded effort between the University of California’s Irvine and San Diego campuses. The institute’s charge is to come up with how next-generation networks,both wired and wireless,will unfold.
“We want to help invent future industry and examine what it’s going to look like in the present,” Rentzepis said.
So far, UCI has raised nearly $50 million in funding from industry heavyweights such as Microsoft Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Boeing Co. Orange County’s big tech names,Conexant Systems Inc., Broadcom Corp., Intersil Corp., Emulex Corp., Newport Corp. and Irvine Sensors Corp.,also have kicked in
“None of the contributing companies’ CEOs have expressed any apprehension with respect to the downturn,” Rentzepis said. “Most of them feel what we are doing would help them secure their future especially at a time like this when it’s difficult for them to do any basic research themselves.”
UCI also has snagged about $13 million in federal grant money as well as $30 million in state funding. The University of California, San Diego, got the lion’s share of state funding, $70 million, because it initiated the program application and invited UCI to join.
In all, the four-program institute is getting $400 million in state funds. Programs at the University of California at Los Angeles and Santa Barbara are set to focus on nanotechnology. Campuses in Berkeley and San Francisco plan to study biomedical technology. Berkeley and Santa Cruz are set to focus on general communications technology.
UCI and UCSD are dividing up the wireless work for the institute with regular exchanges involving faculty, equipment and students. About 55 UCI faculty members and 150 students are expected to take part in the work
Some of UCI’s work is set to cover wireless intelligent transport systems with road sensors, as well as systems to speed up the detection and reporting of bacterial levels in the ocean.
Also, UCI plans to work on the development of quantum computers quick enough to do calculations in minutes instead of weeks, as is the case now, Rentzepis said.
Much of the work the institute does examines whether new technologies will work, he said.
The wireless work also will look at developing a Web that runs on high-speed wireless networks and wireless computing devices. The study could conceivably look at chips inside people, according to Rentzepis.
