Research Centers
Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering
Directed by Dr. David Haussler, the Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering is one of 21 centers around the world that make up the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium, a crucial component of the Human Genome Project. The Center’s affiliates represent a multitude of disciplines: biology, chemistry and biochemistry, computer engineering, computer science, applied mathematics and statistics, environmental toxicology, environmental studies, and physics. The CBSE has been very successful in achieving an international reputation for their work on the human genome. The Center will host Santa Cruz’s component of the California Institute of Science and Innovation (CISI), “QB3,” a venture shared with UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley. The School of Engineering is committed to developing the CBSE and plans to appoint 10-18 faculty over the next 10 years who will further the work and reputation of the Center.
INIST
The Institute for Networks and Information Systems Technology will serve as an umbrella organization for several planned centers of research excellence. The Centers will each focus on an area of systems or networking, supporting technologies, or on applications related to the Internet and data-intensive systems. The School has prestigious faculty and world-renowned research in many of these areas, especially in the core areas of networking and computer systems. The new electrical engineering program has brought expertise in areas of communications, opto-electronics, packaging and instrumentation. Faculty in mechanical engineering, materials science, and environmental engineering will further efforts in remote sensing, opto-electronics, packaging, and instrumentation. The Institute is part of a proposal for another CISI, “CITRIS” with Berkeley and Davis, and we anticipate the Governor will fund the Center in his 2001-02 budget. The CISI project will fund new facilities and additional research staff at Santa Cruz to support the Institute’s contributions to the $400 million CITRIS project.
Interdisciplinary Engineering Research Center (Tentative Title)
A third organized research unit (ORU) in the Baskin School of Engineering will promote innovative research in novel and smart materials, environmental sensing and engineering, ocean engineering, nanoelectromechanical and microrobotics, and engineering management. These areas contain enormous opportunities for synergy with the two other ORUs in the School and also in collaboration with the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey.
The Center for Stock Assessment Research
CSTAR is a collaboration between the National Marine Fisheries Service laboratories in Santa Cruz and Pacific Grove, with the objective of undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate training in the basic science associated with the problems of assessing the numerical abundance, spatial distribution, size distribution and reproductive status of commercially important fish species. A broad and deep understanding of population processes is critical to the development and management of sustainable fisheries. The work at CSTAR focuses on using mathematical, statistical and computer models to solve important environmental and ecological problems. The work is grounded in data, and also seeks to expand the base of basic knowledge that supports rigorous application of science to real-world problems. Furthermore, research on marine fisheries conducted in CSTAR allows testing theoretical predictions via natural and human experiments on a scale that is appropriate for understanding the dynamics of ecosystems. Such large scale experiments are rarely available to the scientific community. The foci of research at CSTAR are 1) Spatially explicit population dynamics 2) Environmental variability and population processes; 3) Risk analysis; and 4) Fish population and community ecology. Scientists at CSTAR are also involved in ecoinformatics, that sub-field of bioinformatics involving the application of mathematics, statistics and information technologies to the analysis of the large ecological data sets which arise naturally in the study of fisheries. To achieve its goals, CSTAR supports graduate student research and undergraduate internships and senior theses when those students work in partnership with NMFS scientists and UCSC faculty advisors. Graduate students can participate as members of a stock assessment team in their second or third years of graduate school. The research and training of first class fishery scientists at CSTAR is science done in the national interest and moves in the direction outlined by the National Research Council in its report Recruiting Fihsery Scientists: Workshop on Stock Assessment and Social Science Careers.