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The California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) is a research center at UCLA whose mission is to encourage university collaboration with industry and to enable the rapid commercialization of discoveries in nanosystems. CNSI members who are on the faculty at UCLA represent a multi-disciplinary team of some of the world's preeminent scientists. The work conducted at the CNSI represents world-class expertise in four targeted areas of nanosystems-related research including Energy, Environment, Health-Medicine, and Information Technology. The CNSI's new building on the campus of UCLA is home to eight core facilities which will serve both academic and industry collaborations.
The CNSI was established in December 2000 through a State of California initiative to create four Governor Gray Davis Institutes for Science and Innovation, one of them being the CNSI, and requiring them to forge partnerships with industry as a way to accelerate technological changes for society in general and advances for the peoples of California in particular. CNSI members represent an interdisciplinary collaboration among UCLA and UCSB faculty from the life and physical sciences, engineering, and medicine. The CNSI at UCLA opened a brand new complex in 2007. The 188,000 square feet (17,000 square meter) facility houses a 260-seat theater, wet and dry laboratories, fully outfitted conference rooms, and three floors of core facilities with equipment in the form of electron microscopes, atomic force microscopes, X-ray diffraction microscopes, specialized optical microscopes, high throughput robotics for molecular screening and class 100 and 1000 clean rooms for projects led by CNSI and other faculty. In addition, the campus at UCLA is funding the CNSI to the tune of 16 jointly-hired faculty to ensure that the institute has the expertise that is essential to making rapid progress in nanoscience and nanotechnology against fierce international competition.
About UCLA
California's largest university, UCLA enrolls approximately 38,000 students per year and offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees from the UCLA College of Letters and Science and 11 professional schools in dozens of varied disciplines. UCLA consistently ranks among the top five universities and colleges nationally in total research-and-development spending, receiving more than $820 million a year in competitively awarded federal and state grants and contracts. For every $1 state taxpayers invest in UCLA, the university generates almost $9 in economic activity, resulting in an annual $6 billion economic impact on the Greater Los Angeles region. The university's health care network treats 450,000 patients per year. UCLA employs more than 27,000 faculty and staff, has more than 350,000 living alumni and has been home to five Nobel Prize recipients.
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