January 2005
THE CALIFORNIA INSTITUTES FOR SCIENCE AND INNOVATION (CAL ISIs)
Part One
Over the past four years, the California Institutes for Science and Innovation (Cal ISI) have become an increasingly manifest part of the physical and scholarly fabric of the UC campuses that host them. The Institutes were launched in 2000 as an ambitious statewide initiative to support research in fields that were recognized as critical to the economic growth of the state – biomedicine, bioengineering, nanosystems, telecommunications and information technology. Moreover, the Cal ISIs were conceived as a catalytic partnership between university research interests and private industry that could expand the state economy into new industries and markets and “speed the movement of innovation from the laboratory into peoples' daily lives” (Governor’s Budget summary 2001-02). The four research centers operate as a partnership among the University, state government, and industry, and each involves structured collaborations among campuses, disciplines, academics researchers, research professional, and students.
Each institute is hosted by at least two UC campuses (with one campus usually taking a lead role): the California Institute for Quantitative Biological Research (QB3) is hosted by UC San Francisco, UC Berkeley, and UC Santa Cruz; the California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI) is hosted by UCLA and UC Santa Barbara; the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Cal-(IT)²) is hosted by UC San Diego and UC Irvine; and the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) is hosted by UC Berkeley, in collaboration with UC Davis, UC Merced, and UC Santa Cruz. Their respective permanent facilities – in various stages of completion – are now or will soon be part of the landscape on the UC Berkeley, Irvine, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, and Santa Barbara campuses. Collectively, the Institutes’ partner companies and organizations number in the hundreds. All of the Cal ISIs have more than met expectations for matching funds from private and federal sources, and are now pursuing knowledge in a wide range of research areas from the design of energy efficient “smart buildings,” to developing a more affordable and accessible cure for malaria, to next generation information technologies for memory and computation, or developing computer visualization environments for computer gaming that will have applications also in distance learning, collaborative work environments, and the understanding of large, complex data sets. In addition, all four Institutes have developed educational and training programs that will be variously integrated into campus programs.
As world-class centers using multi-disciplinary strategies and state of the art facilities to focus on the development of cutting edge technologies, the Cal ISIs are clearly an important addition to the UC system and to each campus associated with them. And because they are government mandated and, in addition, represent a new generation of strong relationships between the academy and industry, they come with a set of questions and concerns about their ongoing funding and how they are integrated into the campuses – in terms of budget, administration and academic programs, and overall planning – and into the systemwide policy structure.
Background
The Cal ISIs were conceived to play an integral role in what was characterized in the late 1990s as California’s “new economy.” Governor Gray Davis first advanced the idea of Cal ISIs in the 2000-2001 budget, initially proposing $75 million per year in state funding over four years to establish three Institutes – QB3, CNSI, and Cal-(IT)². (Start up funding for CITRIS was included later in the 2001-02 budget.) The rationale for establishing the Institutes was to “ensure that California maintains and expands its role at the leading edge of technological innovation in the 21st Century” and to “give rise to world-class centers for strategic innovation that combine excellence in cutting-edge research with collaboration and training for our next generation of scientists and technological leaders” (Governor’s Budget Summary 2000-2001). The final Assembly Bill No. 2883 enacted this initiative into law in July of 2000. The Institutes were selected through a competition that was conducted by a gubernatorial panel and administered by the University of California in 2000. The state’s start up funding totaled $100 million for four years of support – from 2000 to 2004 – for each of the centers, with the expectation that the state funds provided for the Institutes would be matched 2-to-1 by non-state dollars. Lease revenue bonds, a common source of funding for capital projects, were used to generate initial construction costs for the Institutes. The initiative met with approval in an atmosphere of general enthusiasm about the state of the state’s economy. And, given their fundamentally cross-disciplinary and collaborative structures, and their being built on the success potential public/private cooperation, the Cal ISIs conceptually fit in with the model of California’s cluster industries, such as Hollywood and Silicon Valley. (Silicon Valley has been seen as an important factor in several California initiatives, including the creation of the California Institutes for Science and Innovation.) The downturn in California’s economy in subsequent years has lent an even stronger impulse to look for ways to maintain and expand the state’s and the nation’s world standing in science and technology, but at the same time has presented a significant challenge to the University in terms of competing for state funds to support research.
Senate Activity and Interest
The Academic Senate has, from the inception of the Cal ISIs, taken a keen interest in their role within the university. The four Cal ISIs are high profile, ambitious projects of a complex structure, and broad scope of activities, whose impact on host campuses and the UC system the Senate viewed as significant. The University Committee on Planning and Budget (UCPB), the University Committee on Research Policy (UCORP) and the Academic Council held extensive discussions over the course of three years (2001 through 2004) about a range of issues associated with the Institutes, including their funding, their integration into each campus's activities under the same academic and administrative policies as all other units on the campuses, as well as their role in the University's overall academic mission. Primary among the Senate’s concerns was the effort to establish a regularized review process for the Cal ISI in which the Senate would play its customary advisory role, and that ideally would set out review criteria covering research, entrepreneurial activities, impact on campus resources (e.g., use of returned indirect costs), integration into the campus community, intellectual property and conflict of interest issues, and financial management. The Academic Council forwarded specific recommendations of UCORP and UCPB to the administration along with a request that the Senate and the administration work jointly to establish a review process. As the result of the Senate’s persistence, a proposed review structure for the Cal ISIs has recently been drafted that includes Senate review at the systemwide level, but is still tailored to fit the unique structure of the Institutes. That proposal is currently under preliminary review by UCORP, UCPB and the Coordinating Council on Graduate Education (CCGA), and by the chancellors of the Cal ISI campuses.
Another concern of the Senate’s has had to do with ongoing funding for the Institutes. The original funding structure as mandated by the state supported capital development (including matching funds), but limited the funding for core operations of the Institutes to 5% of the total from the state. Faculty felt that the speed with which the Institutes were realized may not have provided necessary consideration of larger budget implications and that the Institutes could, without a permanent budget for operations, become a drain on the resources of campuses. The Cal ISIs will presumably be long-lived, and the Senate committees saw the need for long-range planning for the Institutes that took into account the vagaries of politics and an uncertain state budget. For example, what contingencies could be considered if state funds are not forthcoming in the future to continue operating the Institutes according to the models envisioned at their founding, how priority decisions will be made with regard to allocating scarce research funds (including access to private sources) between already established research units (such as MRUs and ORUs) and the new Institutes, and what role is envisioned in this process for relevant Senate committees on the campuses? The Senate is hopeful of resolving these questions in continuing discussions with the administration.
Additionally, the Senate has tried to focus due attention on other aspects of planning related to the overall integration of the Institutes into the academic life of their host campuses. These include campus allocation of returned indirect costs, possible conflicts of commitment among faculty, the allocation of FTE, intellectual property and technology transfer issues, and graduate education. And, while a major aspect of the Institutes’ mission is to translate research advances into commercial endeavors that enhance the California economy, the Senate is also acting to maintain an awareness of the potential for corporate interests to wield an influence that would compromise the academic integrity of the University.
Facilities and Missions
The websites of the individual California Institutes for Science and Innovation offer a wealth of information on each center’s research, educational, and outreach activities, their industry partners, and their leadership and faculty members. Here is a brief update on the development of Institute facilities, along with excerpts from their respective mission statements:
Buildings for the California Institute for Quantitative Biological Research (QB3) are being constructed at UC Berkeley (the Stanley Biosciences and Bioengineering Facility – scheduled completion June ’06), UC San Francisco (Mission Bay – expected occupancy Feb. 05), and UC Santa Cruz (research space in the Physical Sciences Building – expected completion, spring 05). All of the facilities are designed to provide a physical environment that encourages the synergies and interactions between QB3 investigators, and will house multi-department and multi-disciplinary laboratories, lecture halls, and shared scientific resources.
According to its mission statement, QB3 is a “cooperative effort … that harnesses the quantitative sciences to integrate our understanding of biological systems at all levels of complexity - from atoms and protein molecules to cells, tissues, organs and the entire organism. This long-sought integration allows scientists to attack problems that have been simply unapproachable before, setting the stage for fundamental new discoveries, new products and new technologies for the benefit of human health.”
A new building for the California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI) is currently under construction at UCLA. Eventually, CNSI facilities will include about 280,000 square feet of laboratory and office space, split between UCLA and UCSB, which will include experimental, analytical, manufacturing and computational infrastructure to enable the Institute's pursuit of its scientific and engineering objectives. In all, four major research infrastructure facilities are planned, plus special “incubator” laboratories for collaboration with the CNSI corporate partners n developing pre-competitive technology.
The institute is fulfilling the goals of the initiative by promoting the speedy transfer of nanosystems innovation to the marketplace, and, according to its mission statement, “by marrying educational and research opportunities, CNSI [is producing] broadly trained scientists and engineers capable of sustaining California's leadership in nanotechnology into the future. Work done at the CNSI links together nanostructures to produce behaviors and information that grow exponentially with system complexity. To produce and understand such complex nanosystems that incorporate biological and electronic nanostructures requires fundamentally new approaches to modeling, imaging, characterization, and data analysis. The rewards of creating these new approaches and meeting these new challenges, will be great - nothing less than the development of critical technologies that will drive the future of California's economy.”
The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Cal-(IT)²) is scheduled to occupy its new facilities on the UC San Diego and the UC Irvine campuses in the spring of this year.
The institute’s mission is to “extend the reach of the Internet throughout the physical world. Cal-(IT)² teams UCSD and UCI faculty, students, and research professionals with leading California telecommunications, computer, software, and applications companies to conduct research on the scientific and technological components needed to bring this new Internet into being. Institute applications researchers are conducting their studies in “living laboratories” to investigate how this future Internet will accelerate advances in environmental science, civil infrastructure, intelligent transportation and telematics, genomic medicine, the new media arts, and educational practices.”
Last October, groundbreaking ceremonies were held for a new building that will house the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) on the Berkeley campus. The facility will provide space for interdisciplinary teams, labs, machine rooms and a microfabrication facility. CITRIS will also occupy portions of two floors in the new Engineering building at UC Santa Cruz (opened Nov. 04).
According to its mission statement, “CITRIS will sponsor research on problems that have a major impact on the economy, quality of life, and future success of California: conserving energy; education; saving lives, property, and productivity in the wake of disasters; boosting transportation efficiency; advancing diagnosis and treatment of disease; and expanding business growth through much richer personalized information services. Solutions to many of these problems have a common IT feature: at their core they depend on highly-distributed, reliable, and secure information systems that can evolve and adapt to radical changes in their environment, delivering information services that adapt to the people and organizations that need them. It is this feature that is at the heart of the initial research agenda for CITRIS.”
Part two of this article will cover more specific activities of each of the Institutes, their current research and accomplishments, the role of graduate student research and other educational activities, integration with the host campuses, review processes, and visions for the future.
-Brenda Foust