California’s Institutes for Science and Innovation celebrate 20 years of research and discovery
Twenty years ago, nobody could have foreseen how vital telemedicine would become for safely delivering health care during a pandemic. Nor did they anticipate the urgent need for a statewide network of high-tech cameras to alert first responders to fast moving wildfires.
Today, those technologies are helping Californians cope with a global pandemic and the worst fire season on record, thanks to a visionary partnership between the University of California and state and business leaders that launched 20 years ago.
In December 2000, Gov. Gray Davis created four UC-based California Institutes of Science and Innovation to support interdisciplinary research in fields that were critical to the state’s economic future: Biomedicine, bioengineering, nanosystems, telecommunications and information technology.
The goal was to bring university researchers and private industry together to boost the state’s economy and harness the power of research and discovery to address large-scale societal problems.
Known collectively as the Cal ISIs, they have helped California remain a leader in clean technologies, next-generation therapeutics, cutting-edge biomaterials and more over the last two decades. They are:
- The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute (CITRIS);
- The California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3);
- The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (CalIT2) and;
- The California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI).