UCSD Dedicates Research Facility Friday

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 27 -- The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology's (Calit2) new research facility at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) will be officially dedicated in a ceremony on Friday, Oct. 28.

From its $27 million cleanroom wing for making advanced microchips to a digital cinema theater that could represent the future of motion-picture distribution, university officials say the UCSD headquarters of Calit2 is one of the most wired buildings on any California campus. On Friday UCSD will open the 215,000-sq.-ft building with a mix of formal ceremony, building tours, research exhibits and a multimedia art premiere for an expected 1000 spectators and participants.

The six floors of the Calit2 building will house close to 900 faculty, researchers, staff and students working on diverse research initiatives bringing together engineering, medicine, science and the arts. It is designed to provide a unique collaborative environment to support multidisciplinary research, with bioengineers working alongside computer scientists and visual artists next door to neuroscientists. The building contains specialized spaces, including a lab to fabricate devices at the nanoscale, a wide array of integrated circuits labs, spaces for creating new types of materials, new media arts facilities, reconfigurable research neighborhoods and a rooftop antenna garden. The Center for Research in Computing & the Arts is also headquartered on the first floor.

Calit2 is a joint venture between the University of California, Irvine and UCSD, with dedicated research facilities in both locations. The Irvine Calit2 building -- a $44 million, 120,000-sq.-ft facility -- was the first to open among the California Institutes for Science and Innovation, which were chartered by the state in late 2000. The Irvine facility includes a bioMEMS (microelectromechanical systems) cleanroom for research on biomedical microdevices, a large-scale visualization laboratory, a network laboratory and labs for optical devices, nanotechnology measurement and media arts.

More than 130 California telecommunications, computer, software and applications companies partner with Calit2. Together, they are conducting research in areas such as transportation, emergency response, public safety, the environment, security, health care, business, education, the arts and entertainment.

For more information, visit: www.calit2.net