Dear Friends of CITRIS:
As I continue in my role as Acting Director, I keep coming back to the
inspirational vision of UC's first Chancellor, Clark Kerr, as a kind of guiding
principle. Fifty years ago, Kerr was already an impassioned advocate for integrating
the research and educational missions of the ten UC campuses. I say ten because,
even then, administrators envisioned a Central Valley
campus, a niche now finally filled by UC Merced.
As construction on the beautiful new Headquarters building in Berkeley
quickens, it is important to stress again that CITRIS is a four-campus center
at Davis, Merced,
and Santa Cruz, as well as Berkeley. I am sure that Clark Kerr would
recognize our six-theme, multi-campus program as a key step toward realizing
his vision.
Our first theme, focused on energy and the environment, has strong
representation in projects on all four campuses. The second, intelligent
infrastructures, is exemplified by the work of Roger Bales, whose research
tracking water in the Sierra Nevada is featured in a Q&A in this issue
of the newsletter. Knowing how much water is stored in Sierra snow at any given
time is key not only to managing the state's multi-billion-dollar agriculture
industry but also to avoiding floods and fires, preparing for droughts, and
ensuring that the state's natural habitats get their share of moisture, too.
CITRIS's third theme is healthcare; UC Davis and its
medical school have essential programs in telemedicine now reaching all over
the state. Services, our fourth theme, is exemplified by UC Santa Cruz's NASA
Ames site and in the business school and the I-school here at Berkeley. The fifth theme is in the arts and humanities. Finally, the sixth theme,
technology for emerging regions, is again represented on all four campuses. The
second article in this newsletter focuses on two sustainable development
projects involving innovative clean drinking water projects in India. One
project is promoted by a Berkeley
student group and the other by Ashok Gadgil at Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory. Together they promise to improve the health and lives of hundreds
of thousands, if not millions, of people in years to come.
As CITRIS continues to bring researchers from multiple campuses and disciplines
together, and to support them in their efforts to bring innovative
technological solutions to some of the world's most pressing and persistent
problems, I only wish Clark Kerr could be here to see that his dream remains
alive and passionately pursued.
We appreciate your support. Keep up the good work.
Professor Paul K. Wright
Acting Director, Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of
Society
CITRIS Events, Honors, & News
UC Santa Cruz's Tenth Chancellor Appointed
George Blumenthal, who has served as Acting Chancellor of UC
Santa Cruz for the past 14 months, has been named Chancellor by the UC Board of
Regents. He is a distinguished professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC
Santa Cruz and former chair of UCSC's and UC's Academic Senate. More information about Chancellor Blumenthal
and his appointment can be found at http://chancellor.ucsc.edu/.
CITRIS Research
Exchange schedule for the fall
The popular CITRIS Research Exchange talks are held every
Wednesday at noon in 290 Hearst
Memorial Mining
Building on the UC
Berkeley campus, and lunch is provided. These talks are all free, open to the
general public, broadcast live online and archived on our website. Please see
the flyer for a complete list of speakers and topics at http://www.citris-uc.org/RE-Fall2007
New UC Santa Cruz tool tests
Wikipedia trustworthiness
Because anyone can edit Wikipedia, the Web encyclopedia's
reliability varies wildly. Now Luca de Alfaro at UC Santa Cruz aims to provide
users with software that flags questionable lines in Wikipedia entries. More
about his research can be found at http://trust.cse.ucsc.edu/
Berkeley Team Receives NSF Grant for Homeland
Security
Five UC Berkeley
researchers have been awarded a $1.4 million grant to improve detection of
nuclear threats. Led by Professor Ed Morse of nuclear engineering, the DONUTS (Domestic
NUclear Threat Security) Initiative uses a multi-pronged approach to enable the
detection of nuclear weapon materials at ports of entry into the United States.
http://www.citris-uc.org/news/berkeley_team_receives_nsf_grant_nuclear_threat_detection
UCSC Baskin
School of Engineering Research Review Day
Happy tenth birthday to the SOE at UCSC! To celebrate, the
school held its Research Review Day on Friday, October 12th, on the
UC Santa Cruz campus. Twelve faculty members gave talks in their six focus
areas and were followed by a poster show and reception.
http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/events/tenth/calendar.html
Art and Technology
Colloquium
The Art and Technology Colloquium series is now underway.
This year-long set of talks presents artists, writers, curators, and scholars
who consider contemporary issues at the intersection of aesthetic expression,
emerging technologies, and cultural history from a critical perspective.