Dear Friends of CITRIS,
As the new academic year begins, our campuses are humming with energetic students eager to learn and make their marks.
Here at CITRIS, we are happy to report on some new beginnings of our own. For one, we welcome Joshua Viers as the new CITRIS Director on the UC Merced campus. Professor Viers has recently joined the UC Merced faculty after a distinguished career at UC Davis, where he was the associate executive director for the influential UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. He has spent the past decade working on a wide range of natural resources issues, including climate change, sustainable land use, and water management. In his new position at Merced, he will marshal talents from several disciplines to help find solutions to California’s intensifying challenges in water management. He is sure to invigorate the Intelligent Infrastructure Initiative on all of our campuses and bring a fresh dose of CITRIS spirit to Merced.
In addition, CITRIS has launched an exciting new partnership with the Center for Technology and Aging (CTA), advancing our commitment to making quality health care accessible to all Californians. A national leader in the use of patient-centered technologies for older adults, CTA has joined as a new CITRIS Center, and its director, David Lindeman, has come onboard as the co-director, with Steve DeMello, of our Health Care Initiative. Dr. Lindeman’s extensive experience with technology and public health will be a welcome addition to our health care–related programs on all four campuses.
In the interview that follows, Joshua Viers points out that California’s—and humanity’s—destiny may depend on the outcome of the race between population growth and the advancement of technologies needed to better monitor and manage our natural resources.
>> Read CITRIS @ Merced’s New Director: Joshua Viers
At CITRIS we are working overtime to ensure the race is won. As I continue my work both here at CITRIS and with the Berkeley Energy and Climate Institute (BECI), I am continually reminded of what a privilege it is to be working on the cutting edge of some of the most innovative and important frontiers in science and technology.
Keep up the good work.
Paul K. Wright
Director, CITRIS and the Banatao Institute@CITRIS Berkeley
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