The engineering schools of the University of California, Irvine, and the University of California, San Diego, are jointly pursuing a proposed $75 million state research grant in a competition among the nine universities in the UC system.
The grant would be used to establish a wide-ranging communications technology program at the two schools. It would require a sizeable match,$150 million,from private, federal and/or community sources.
Nicolaos Alexopoulos, dean of The Henry Samueli School of Engineering at UCI, said a first step toward meeting the match was taken last week, with the commitment by Samueli’s Broadcom Corp. and Newport Beach-based Conexant Systems Inc. to donate $3 million each to form the Center for Pervasive Communications at UCI.
The cooperative effort by the two Southern California universities is a response to Gov. Gray Davis’ plan to award three grants of $75 million each to establish three Institutes for Science and Innovation across the state. The grants are included in the state budget, and were expected to survive any last-minute changes in the spending plan, which was passed by the Legislature late last week.
Davis referred to the grant competition in remarks last week at UCI during an event recognizing the $6 million combined donation from Broadcom and Conexant. Davis said he believed the grants to UCI would give the school “a leg up” in competing for one of the $75 million state grants.
Alexopoulos, in comments following the governor’s speech, disclosed the UCI-UCSD venture and said that it made sense for the two schools to pursue a grant jointly because of the huge sum of matching private money that would have to be raised. Alexopoulos said other UC campuses also are forming joint efforts to pursue the proposed grants. Robert W. Conn, dean of the Irwin and Joan Jacobs School of Engineering at UCSD, who also attended the event, said the UCI-UCSD linkup makes sense because “this region is where the communications revolution is occurring.”
Conexant chairman and CEO Dwight Decker and Broadcom co-chairman Samueli also attended the event. Both said the new center would generate research and help to fill a dire need for engineering talent by their companies and others. Samueli, referring to his prior $20 million naming grant to the UCI engineering school, kidded, “That was magnanimous and philanthropic. Here, we’re being greedy capitalists.”
Alexopoulos said the grants would support five faculty, four junior faculty, a director and “numerous fellowships.” n
