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CITRIS headquarters: new building to foster innovation
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Participants
at the CITRIS groundbreaking were (from left) Chancellor Robert
Birgeneau, major CITRIS donor Dado Banatao, UC president Robert
Dynes, Special Advisor to Governor Schwarzenegger on Jobs
and Economic Growth David Crane, ME graduate student Elizabeth
Reilly, and CITRIS director Ruzena Bajcsy.
PEG SKORPINSKI PHOTO |
With ceremonial tosses of dirt on a sunny October afternoon,
College and University leaders kicked off construction of the
new headquarters building for CITRIS, the Center for Information
Technology Research in the Interest of Society.
About 300 faculty, students, and alumni, as well as campus,
community, and state leaders attended the groundbreaking ceremonies
to celebrate the complex that will provide students and faculty
with state-of-the-art facilities for pioneering interdisciplinary
education and research.
Launched in 2001, CITRIS is one of four California Institutes
for Science and Innovation, formed as a public–private partnership.
Drawing from strengths in engineering, the sciences, business,
public policy, economics, and the humanities, CITRIS has grown
rapidly to embrace dozens of faculty–student teams across
the four UC partner campuses, including Berkeley, Davis, Merced,
and Santa Cruz.
The new CITRIS building will be the hub of this wide-ranging network—a
lively nexus for development of innovative, high-impact technology
targeted to solve some of the most challenging problems in energy,
health, security, the environment, and beyond.
“The goal of CITRIS is to maximize the impact of our education
and research,” said Engineering dean Richard Newton in an
upbeat presentation emphasizing the CITRIS hallmarks of collaboration,
corporate partnerships, and “use-inspired” research
to serve society and improve people’s lives. Key contributors,
he said, are the corporate and private donors who have funded
the building and the students working on CITRIS projects today,
who will be the leaders of tomorrow.
“The words of the CITRIS acronym really spoke to me,”
said Elizabeth Reilly (’07 ME), a graduate student working
in CITRIS on “energy-harvesting” wireless sensor networks
that she hopes will help conserve our energy supply. “A
center that’s in the interest of society; there’s
an opportunity to do research here that really matters.”
Dado Banatao, Silicon Valley entrepreneur and major CITRIS benefactor,
also spoke. “The lifelong and distance learning aspects
of the institute were what really brought CITRIS to the attention
of my wife Maria and me,” he said. “We believe strongly
in bringing the strength and values of a Berkeley engineering
education to students who would not otherwise have such an opportunity.”
The 145,000 square-foot building, scheduled for completion in
2007, will include a nanofabrication laboratory, distance learning
center, flexible educational and research facilities, and will
link to the partnering UC campuses.
Visit the CITRIS Web site at www.citris-uc.org
for more details.
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