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UCR Nanotechnologists
Help Launch New
National Center Devoted
to Microelectronics
Roland Kawakami, a professor of
physics and astronomy; Ludwig Bartels,
a professor of chemistry; and Cengiz
Ozkan, a professor of mechanical
engineering, are members of a new
national research center—the Center
for Spintronic Materials, Interfaces
and Novel Architectures (C-SPIN)
— focused on developing the next
generation of microelectronics. All three
are part of the Materials Science and
Engineering Graduate Program at UCR.
C-SPIN is aimed at developing
technologies for spin-based computing
and memory systems. Unlike today’s
computers with their electrical charges
moving across wires,
the spin-based
computing
systems will
process and
store information
through
spin, a fundamental
property
of electrons. Spinbased
computing
can combine memory and logic at
the device and circuit level, and if it is
based on the hybridization of magnetic
materials and semiconductors, it has the
potential to create computers that are
smaller, faster and more energy-efficient.
Led by the University of Minnesota,
C-SPIN is being supported by a
five-year, $28 million grant awarded by
the Semiconductor Research Corp. and
the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency. Out of that grant, about $3
million is allocated to UCR.
A New Leader for
UCR Alumni Relations
Following a
yearlong, nationwide
search, UC Riverside
found the new
head of its Office
of Alumni and
Constituent Relations
about 40 miles west,
in the city of Irvine.
Jorge E. Ancona has been appointed as
the new assistant vice chancellor for Alumni
and Constituent Relations and executive
director of the UC Riverside Alumni
Association. He has served as assistant
vice chancellor for alumni relations, and
executive director of the UCI Alumni
Association since 2002.
At UCR, Ancona will lead a staff of
12 full-time employees and oversee the
management of hundreds of volunteers and
advocates. He will also be responsible for
stewardship of the Alumni Association’s
endowment funds, and for further
developing fundraising for the alumni
association and alumni relations programs.
Highlights of his career at Irvine include
establishing the UCI Student Alumni
Association; growing the association’s
scholarship endowments from $1.5
million to $4 million; and increasing the
association’s assets from $3.4 million
to $8 million. Under hi s leadership,
the association earned 18 Council for
Advancement and Support of Education
(CASE) district awards for outstanding
alumni events and communications as
well as national honors from CASE for its
alumni appreciation program in 2004.
Ancona succeeds Kyle Hoffman, who
held the position for 23 years before leaving
in May 2012 to become vice chancellor for
Development and Alumni Relations at UC
Merced.
Numbers Show
Achievement at UCR
1
10
35
8
1
6
New wasp species named
after UCR. Serguei V.
Triapitsyn, principal
museum scientist at the
Entomology Research
Museum on campus,
discovered several
tiny female fairyflies in
Russia and named them
Gonatocerus ucri.
UCR’s natural sciences
and engineering spot in the
annual Leiden ranking of
the top 500 major universities
in the world.
UCR’s overall ranking in
the sciences worldwide,
also from the Leiden
ranking.
The number of times Ian
Whitelaw, music director
of the UCR pipe bands,
has placed at the Western
United States Pipe Band
Association.
The number of UCR
faculty members who are
part of the prestigious
American Philosophical
Society. Plant geneticist
Susan Wessler was given
the honor in April.
The number of UCR
faculty who are members
of the National Academy
of Sciences. Xuemei
Chen, a professor of
plant cell and molecular
biology, was elected into
the academy in April.
UCR Spring 2013 | 7