Berkeley CSE
Multidisciplinary Research and Education
in Computational Science and Engineering
Computational Research and Theory Building
The University of California Regents have approved a new Computational Research and Theory (CRT) Building, which will provide new opportunities for research collaborations with campus investigators. The CRT Building will be a $112.9M research facility that will provide a 32,000-sq-ft computer floor that could support a variety of computing systems, including high performance computers, research clusters, and advanced data storage systems. The building will also provide office space for over 300 people and many high tech conference, seminar, meeting, and visualization lab rooms. The CRT will be designed to have flexible space for multidisciplinary computing science and computational science research teams such as those envisioned for the Berkeley CSE program.
- Program: Facility to accommodate scientific computing research, high performance computing centers, and the Berkeley CSE program.
- Assignable Sq Ft: 73,000
- Gross Sq Ft: 126,300
- Total Project Budget: $112,944,000
- Construction Start: October 2008
- Construction Complete: May 2011
Funding for the Berkeley CSE Program
While the Berkeley CSE program and the CRT building have been approved by the University, we need more resources to make sure that the opportunities and synergies sketched above are fully exploited. In particular, we request:
- Funding to support Berkeley CSE research centers in the new CRT building. This could be in the form of an endowment, providing approximately $500K/year in base funding, which would be leveraged by other funding from federal and other resources for the Berkeley CSE center. This money would support graduate students, provide start-up funds for new research endeavors in CSE, support distinguished visiting speakers, help faculty create new CSE courses, and otherwise support the Designated Emphasis in CSE. In particular, it could be used to initially support highly interdisciplinary endeavors that other, more narrowly focused funding sources would find too risky. This support can also help encourage other sponsors to collaborate by funding projects of joint interest.
- Funding to help with the $112.9M overall cost of the CRT building and the CSE facilities at the CITRIS building. In return for this support, we would propose naming part of the building — a CSE center, high tech conference, seminar, meeting, or visualization lab room — after the sponsor’s company name or employee. In addition, visitors from companies collaborating on joint projects would have office space in this building. We would be able to design the internal space to maximize the possibility of collaboration between interdisciplinary teams, collocating faculty, students, research staff and visitors. Berkeley has extensive experience with the benefits of such collocation
