College builds toward future

Jeff Benson

The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information

Technology officially opened its new $44-million research facility

Friday with a ribbon-cutting ceremony in front of nearly 350

university faculty and industry leaders.

The ceremony was held a day after UC regents voted unanimously to

spend $371 million to replace the 30-year-old UCI Medical Center in

Orange by 2009.

Faculty, students and partners will use the 120,000-square-foot,

four-story California Institute for Telecommunications and

Information Technology building to conduct collaborative research in

information technologies, communications, digital arts and

economy-related applications. It will also house art and science

classes for the university’s students.

“It is a very unusual building, because people using the building

are coming from many different disciplines,” said the institute’s

director, Albert Yee. “It’s really a cross-section of the entire

campus. We’ve got many of the same interests under one roof so they

can interact. Some of our highly specialized laboratories don’t exist

anywhere else.”

The most unique portion of the building, Yee said, is the

biomedical engineering lab, where researchers will work on developing

microscopic devices for implantation.

“It allows us to make many small things in a very sterile

environment,” Yee said. “We are not aware of any facility that allows

that.”

A sister research facility is scheduled for completion at UC San

Diego in spring 2005. When the San Diego building opens in October,

faculty and students at the two campuses will be able combine their

research instantly from both locations. The researchers will use a

fiber-optic network that enables them to teleconference at 200

gigahertz per second at many places throughout the buildings, Yee

said.

Lisa Kalustian, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s chief deputy director

for Southern California, said the governor issued a statement because

he was unable to attend the ceremony.

“I commend the university on its efforts in learning and

information technology research,” Kalustian read on Schwarzenegger’s

behalf. “Its unwavering devotion to technological innovation improves

our lives and builds a pathway to the future.”

UCI Executive Vice Chancellor Ralph J. Cicerone called the

facility “a spectacular building.”

“It’s a facility designed around the idea of collaboration,”

Cicerone said. “Collaboration between UCI and its friends in the

private sector ... and collaboration between students and faculty at

UCI. It’s an institute without intellectual walls.”

A future UCI expenditure was approved Thursday, as UC regents

voted to spend $371 million to replace the 30-year-old UCI Medical

Center in Orange. A 191-bed, seven-story building will join the

center’s existing 105-bed main hospital tower and 84-bed psychiatric

center, spokeswoman Kim Pine said.

The old county building will be demolished in 2009 after

construction of the new building is completed, she said. Safety

officials said it would be unsafe in the event of a major earthquake.

“The new university hospital we’re building is going to be a

patient-care teaching and research hospital,” Pine said. “What we’re

hoping is that it’s going to be a landmark center for medicine

that’ll attract the best and brightest faculty physicians and give us

a facility to provide the latest specialized care for the Orange

County community.”