UCSB Engineering

Our Greatest Need: Unrestricted Support

A Letter from the Dean

The year 2006 has been extremely successful for the College of Engineering. We continue to garner support and recognition for our research and teaching. Our faculty members are winning scores of notable awards and being elected to the most prestigious professional organizations, and we are forming new and exciting collaborations with industry.

For example, here are just a few of the highlights:

• We were chosen for two NIH Program Excellence in Nanotechnology (PEN) grants, making us the only university to participate in two grants. We are developing novel technologies to diagnose and treat diseases of the heart and lungs over the next five years. The funding adds up to almost $26 million and includes collaborations with the Burnham Institute and UC San Diego.
• The National Science Foundation renewed and increased its support of our Materials Research Laboratory with a $20.52 million, six-year award. (Our MRL and the MRL at the University of Pennsylvania were the only two centers to receive increased funding).
• The Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation of Tokyo and UCSB are extending our research and education alliance for a new term of four years. Mitsubishi Chemical will invest between $8.5 and $10 million at UCSB, supporting research, fellowships and the administration of the MC-CAM center.
• In September, John Bowers, a professor of computer and electrical engineering, announced his groundbreaking work with Intel developing the world's first hybrid silicon laser. The news resulted in more than 200 print news stories in national publications such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and more than 100 radio and television segments.

And there's so much more. Underlying all the success stories are several key factors that promise even more good news in 2007.

We have a highly creative, collaborative faculty who are committed to finding exciting answers through highly interdisciplinary work, the new frontier in engineering and the sciences. We are considered a partner of choice with industry, with more and more firms looking to us for ideas and discoveries they can help transfer to the real world.

In sum, we're in a unique position, what with the development of new facilities and labs, the addition of new technology, the avid interest of industry, and the tremendous capabilities of our faculty and staff to create a College of Engineering that is truly outstanding and noteworthy.

Yet, through continued unrestricted support, we can do even more. Such gifts are unusually valuable at this critical time because they will give us the freedom to put the funds where they are most strategically needed to continue to build this excellence into a world class College of Engineering.

Please consider making a gift of unrestricted support to allow us to further our vision for the College of Engineering in the critical years ahead.

Matthew Tirrell
Richard A. Auhll Professor and Dean
College of Engineering