FLIR Systems is a company that specializes in the design and manufacturing of infrared cameras. FLIR offers a diversified solutions portfolio that serves the government, defense, industrial, and commercial markets. The company’s Goleta, California office has been the fastest-growing division, employing more than 500 people and focusing on sensor development and core thermal cameras. According to site leadership, part of its “secret sauce” has been its partnership with UC Santa Barbara, which began small but has evolved and strengthened over the last 10 years.
Relationship with UC Santa Barbara Pays Off for Technology Leader: Capstone Courses are Critical
In partnership with UC Santa Barbara’s Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies, Pfizer, the world’s largest research-based biomedical and pharmaceutical company, launched the Insulin Resistance Pathways Project (IRP). The three-year, $14 million investigation will focus on discovering new drugs to treat diabetes. The project is lead by Dr. Preston Hensley, Senior Director of Pfizer’s Worldwide Exploratory Science & Technology division.
Pfizer and UCSB Collaborate on Major Diabetes Research Program
Based on the joint research and development programs, plus the numbers of alumni Northrop Grumman employs from UCSB, UCSB is one of the top tier schools with which Northrop Grumman works. This status was the impetus behind their interest in helping to instigate a formal outreach program for industry.
Northrop Grumman- The charter member of the Corporate Affiliates Program
Eleven faculty members (including one Nobel Laureate) have recently collaborated with Teledyne Scientific and Imaging to successfully produce leading-edge communications products for commercial and military markets. The partnership has brought over $100 million in federal grants alone to Teledyne. The Corporate Affiliates program is working with Teledyne Scientific and Imaging to find additional technology areas of alignment and growth.
Teledyne Scientific and Imaging and UCSB-a win-win partnership for over 30 years
What will computers look like in the future and how will they function? The answer to these questions could be the quantum computer, the most powerful computing device the world has ever known. But creating such a computer is no easy feat. One of the biggest challenges lies in the delicate temperament of the most basic component of the quantum computer: the qubit. In a conventional computer, transistors store bits of information and each bit has a value of either a 1 or 0. The power to motivate a bit is electricity. With a quantum computer, the classical bit gives way to a quantum bit, or qubit. Qubits are very sensitive to their environment, and are not stored in transistors; rather, they can be stored in a quantum mechanical state such as a photon polarization, electron spin, or in even more exotic degrees of freedom.
Microsoft Research: Station Q at UCSB and the future of computing: Moore did not predict the power of a qubit!
What would our world be like without TVs, cell phones or computers? Few of us can imagine a world without glass and all of the technological advancements it has enabled. Glass has long been the measure of our quality of life, from our earliest ability to store perishables, to enabling Thomas Edison to light the world with his tungsten filaments, to the fiberoptic cables that criss-cross the globe to power the telecommunications revolution; these last two technologies were pioneered by Corning.
Corning Believes in Long-term Academic Collaborations!
Mentor Graphics is a leader in Electronic Design Automation (EDA). Through their well-established products and services, they enable companies to develop better electronic products faster and more cost-effectively. EDA is a very competitive field where having the advantage of interacting with and attracting the best and brightest engineers will give a competitive edge. The Wilsonville, Oregon based company has been successfully engaged with the students and faculty of UC Santa Barbara for a number of years. Recently, Mentor Graphics went through a detailed exercise to rank U.S. universities they interact with. The results were used to determine their priorities for driving university research collaborations and targeted student recruiting in a cost effective manner.
Mentor Graphics selects UCSB as their first choice university partner by conducting a comprehensive management survey
ATK Space Systems – Goleta(ATK-Goleta) is an independent provider of mission enabling deployable space systems. It is prized by its parent corporation, ATK, as an innovator in solar arrays, deployable booms, and related structures and mechanisms. Its exceptional team of engineering, manufacturing and product assurance personnel has had 100% flight success on all space hardware they have manufactured. Given the fact that ATK-Goleta is a key provider of solar array and deployable booms for many of the nation’s space-orbiting devices/satellites, they need to have a consistent source of top technical talent. And, not surprisingly, more than 25% of all ATK employees attended or graduated from UCSB, which is very nearby.
ATK capitalizes on top UCSB engineering students through Capstone
Severe battlefield and trauma injuries present unique problems in stemming blood loss, which is the primary cause of combat deaths. In extreme cases first responders may have less than two minutes to save a life. Recognizing the need to improve survivability for US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Navy and Marine Corps evaluated a number of products to reduce uncontrolled bleeding.
Z-Medica and UC Santa Barbara – Engineering life saving technologies
A true measure of success for university-industry collaborations is a seamless operation that stimulates new concepts for potential products. That is what Raytheon’s Vision Systems (RVS), which develops sensors, electronics and meta-materials for infrared imaging, feels they get with their collaborations with UCSB.
UCSB’s Technical Staff and Facilities allows Raytheon’s Vision Systems to do Technology Development at a Fraction of the Cost
In 2005 the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) wrote a report entitled “Rising Above the Gathering Storm,” which reflected on the fact that the US is not training enough engineers and physical scientists to replace those in the work force today. In many established companies, the average age of its employees is over 45. The generation of talent that won the space race and the Cold War is reaching retirement age and we are not producing the engineers and scientists that it will take to replace these soon-to-be retiring baby boomers
Dow and UCSB - Investment for future generations of Scientists and Engineers
The Mitsubishi Chemical Center for Advanced Materials (MC-CAM) at UCSB was established in 2001 as a vehicle for promoting open innovation within the Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation (MCC) and to extend MCC’s research enterprise outside of Japan. The research targets for the center were broadly in specialty and functional materials with a specific emphasis on applications targeting organic electronics and solid-state lighting. Mitsubishi Chemical evaluated potential universities world-wide and ultimately chose to establish their center at UC Santa Barbara based on the excellence and breadth of UCSB’s materials programs and its track record in interdisciplinary research. MC-CAM is the MCC’s first and longest running major university partnership.
Mitsubishi Chemical and UCSB: A bluprint for successful university-corporate relationships
The Solid State Lighting & Energy Electronics Center (SSLEEC) at UC Santa Barbara is a new collaborative center, which partners key industry leaders and UCSB researchers to advance solid-state lighting and energy efficient power switching using wide-bandgap semiconductors.
UCSB Solid State Lighting & Energy Electronics Center: A results-driven industry consortium
There is a discussion among universities regarding the benefits and disadvantages to hosting “embedded corporate researchers” from corporations within a campus’ laboratories. UC Santa Barbara hosts a large number of corporate researchers and has for the last decade and a half. Our longest-standing corporate partner is Mitsubishi Chemical, who established the on-going Mitsubishi Chemical Center for Advanced Materials (MC-CAM) in 2001. The depth and breadth of their relationship within UC Santa Barbara highlights the value of cultivating embedded research relationships.
Mitsubishi Chemical and UCSB: Embedded Corporate Researchers