In 2000, the California Governor’s office launched four visionary Institutes for Science and Innovation. The institutes share a vital mission: to address large-scale societal problems through interdisciplinary research and new market applications.
The state of California, University of California, and hundreds of leading businesses joined together in an unprecedented partnership to lay the foundation for California’s future economic and social development. These multicampus institutes are opening doors to new understanding, new solutions, and new applications through essential research in biomedicine, bioengineering, nanosystems, telecommunications, and information technology.
In addition to the Center for Information Technology in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute (CITRIS), the other three institutes are:
- The California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) at UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco and UC Santa Cruz; dedicated to advancing our understanding of biological systems at all levels of complexity.
- The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (CalIT2) at UC Irvine and UC San Diego; focused on breakthroughs in telecommunications and information technology infrastructures.
- The California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UC Los Angeles and UC Santa Barbara; enabling rapid commercialization of discoveries in nanoscience and nanotechnology.