CSU Edison Scholarship Encourages STEM Transfer Students

(3/10/08) California has the largest public university systems in the nation; nonetheless, as elsewhere in the United States, it has problems producing enough science and technology graduates to meet the demands of its high-tech sector. A scholarship program created by the California State University (CSU) and Southern California Edison seeks to help address this shortfall.

---

Sandia Researchers Develop Integrated Computer Model for Energy and Water Management

(1/31/08) It takes large volumes of water to produce energy and significant amounts of low-cost energy to treat and distribute water. But the planning and management of these fundamental resources have historically been done independently of one another. A Sandia National Laboratories research team is attempting to remedy the situation by developing interactive computer modeling tools that integrate the two for planning and management purposes.

---

Stanford University, Monterey Bay Aquarium and MBARI Launch Center for Ocean Solutions

(1/12/08) Stanford University, the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) have joined forces to create the Center for Ocean Solutions, a new collaboration that will bring together international experts in marine science and policy to find innovative ways to protect and restore the world's oceans.

---

Bay Area Partnership to Host DOE Joint BioEnergy Institute

(6/27/07) Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman has announced that a partnership of three national laboratories and three research universities in the San Francisco Bay Area has been chosen to host one of three bioenergy research centers, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). This new center will be known as the DOE Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) and is expected to receive $125 million in DOE funding over five years.

---

Major Universities Offer Guidelines for Responsible Technology Licensing

(3/9/07) The nation's top research universities and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) today issued a set of shared guidelines intended to protect the public interest when universities grant licenses for the rights to their latest scientific advances to private parties.

---

CIRM Awards First Stem Cell Research Grants

(2/21/07) More than two years after voters approved a $3 billion program to fund stem cell research in California, the state has approved the first grants focused solely on human embryonic stem cell research. The 29-member Independent Citizens Oversight Committee (ICOC), governing board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), on February 16 approved 72 grants totaling approximately $45 million over two years, to researchers at 20 academic and non-profit research centers throughout the state.

---

BP Awards $500 Million Energy Research Program To UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

(2/1/07) Global energy firm BP has announced that it has selected the University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to lead an unprecedented $500 million research effort to develop new sources of energy and reduce the impact of energy consumption on the environment. The funding will create the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), which initially will focus its research on biotechnology to produce biofuels - that is, turning plants and plant materials, including corn, field waste, switchgrass and algae, into transportation fuels.

---

Research, Education, and Energy Central to Schwarzenegger's Plans for 2007

(1/10/07) Governor Schwarzenegger laid out an ambitious agenda for 2007 in his State of the State address on Tuesday, naming innovation, education, and the environment as key elements of preparing California for the future. Innovation and education are two important areas which four CCST task forces stressed in their recent report to the governor, "California Response to Rising Above the Gathering Storm". The industry-led task forces made attracting and keeping top talent, as well as improving K-12 science and math teaching, their first recommendation.

---

Gov. Schwarzenegger Proposes $95 Million Innovation Initiative

(1/2/07) On December 27 Governor Schwarzenegger announced that he will propose nearly $95 million in the state budget to create the Governor's Research and Innovation Initiative. This initiative provides funding for major projects that will grow California's economic strength in key innovation sectors, including clean energy technologies, biotechnology and nanotechnology.

---

San Diego Supercomputers Help Speed High-Tech Drug Design

(11/3/06) The high-stakes task of designing new drugs relies on high-tech tools, especially computerized, three-dimensional simulations of proteins. Researchers at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) have helped to achieve the largest-ever protein-structure prediction - and completed the complex simulation in less than three hours.

---

California Gets Serious About Teacher Quality

(10/5/06) Governor Schwarzenegger has signed Senate Bill 1209 into law, will help to alleviate a shortage in the face of looming teacher retirements by reducing bureaucratic barriers to the profession and encouraging skilled and knowledgeable teachers to take jobs in the state’s neediest schools.

---

Laser Wakefield Accelerator Achieves 1 Billion Electron Volts

(9/26/06) In a precedent-shattering demonstration of the potential of laser-wakefield acceleration, scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, working with colleagues at the University of Oxford, have accelerated electron beams to energies exceeding a billion electron volts (1 GeV) in a distance of just 3.3 centimeters.

---

Modern Technology Reveals Ancient Science

(7/27/06) Finally, after more than 1000 years in obscurity, the last unreadable pages of the works of ancient mathematician Archimedes are being deciphered, thanks to the x-ray vision at the Department of Energy's Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). This discovery gives us the most complete record of Archimedes' works since the middle ages.

---

UCI receives $2.9 million grant to start 'LifeChips' program

(7/20/06) UC Irvine has been awarded nearly $2.9 million over five years to create a new graduate program in which students will combine the practices of engineering, physical sciences, biological sciences and medicine to produce small-scale technologies that benefit human health.

---

Laboratory Takes Home 7 "Innovation Oscars"

(7/10/06) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers have captured seven awards for developing advanced technologies with commercial potential. Six teams of LLNL scientists and engineers and an individual LLNL researcher have won plaques from the trade journal R&D Magazine for being among the top 100 industrial innovations worldwide for 2005. They worked with three industrial collaborators and a university space sciences laboratory.

---