Third Annual All-hands Meeting Focuses on New Buildings

4.15.04 – Calit² drew 175 attendees from across its two campuses, industrial and governmental partners, and interested others to its third annual All-hands Meeting held Monday this week at UCSD. The focus of the meeting was the “Technical, Cultural, and Collaborative Aspects of the New Buildings.

After welcomes by Dave Miller, Acting Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, UCSD, and Ralph Cicerone, UCI Chancellor, the agenda featured the emergent characteristics of Calit² (Smarr), building and research activities at UCSD and UCI (Rao and Yee), and more in-depth presentations on the clean rooms (Yu and Li), networking capabilities (Kimball and Ayanoglu), and New Media Arts facilities (Brown and Pearce).

The afternoon was devoted to breakout sessions on sensornets, emergency response applications, networking, data-driven applications, and social sciences, followed by a closing reception. Two tours of the UCSD construction site were offered, and some 50 people took advantage of them. All sessions were videotaped, and the videos and Powerpoint presentations will become available on the Web site soon.

Related activities included a special dinner the night before for a visiting delegation representing various research institutes, regions, and networking interests in Mexico. This group included Jaime Parada, Director General of CONACyT; Javier Mendieta, Director General of CICESE; Carlos Casasús, Director of CUDI, Mexico’s Internet2; and Carlos Duarte, Director of CONACyT-CA USA. CONACyT stands for El Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (which translates as the National Science and Technology Council, which is comparable to the National Science Foundation in the U.S.). CICESE stands for El Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada (translation: The Center for Scientific Investigation and Higher Education in Ensenada).

The Calit² Governing Board and Advisory Board also took advantage of the All-hands Meeting to convene their respective groups. The Governing Board, with 20 members present for their 20th meeting, discussed issues related to organization of the two divisions of Calit², principles for occupancy of the new buildings, evolution of the management structure, the operating budget, and creation of an Executive Committee. Co-chairs Frieder Seible, Dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering, UCSD, and Nick Alexopoulos, Dean of the Samueli School of Engineering, UCI, invited both boards to dinner that evening.

The Advisory Board had its third annual meeting the following day, discussing technical advisory roles played by board members and how to increase the level of this engagement, key characteristics of the Calit² industrial program, the emergent international program, communication and outreach strategy leveraging the new facilities in the buildings and talents of the communications staff, and the management structure. Susanne Huttner, Associate Vice Provost at UC Office of the President, who oversees the California Institutes for Science and Innovation initiative, participated in both days’ meetings.

Related Links
AHM 2004