DATE: June 09, 2008
CONTACT:
Chris Przirembel, 864-656-7701
cprzmbl@clemson.edu
WRITER:
Sandra Woodward, (864) 656-1220
sandra@clemson.edu
WRITER:
Susan Polowczuk (editor), (864) 656-2063
spolowc@clemson.edu
Endowed Chairs Review Board approves two new Centers of Economic Excellence at Clemson
CLEMSON — Clemson University Monday received $4 million from the South Carolina Endowed Chairs Review Board for two new Centers of Economic Excellence with endowed chairs for each of the programs. The state funding must be matched with private funds for a total value of $8 million.
The Cyber-Institute Center of Economic Excellence at Clemson University combines faculty expertise in computer and electrical engineering with Clemson’s growing computing power to create a strong research program, industrial partnerships and technology-transfer opportunities. The center will enhance the university’s competitiveness in research areas that rely on storage, processing and transmitting large amounts of data. Clemson expects the center to provide rapid computational prototyping and to serve as an educational and testing facility.
The new endowed chair will be a faculty member in the department of electrical and computer engineering but will report to Clemson’s vice provost for computing and information technology and will be housed in the Information Technology building at the Clemson University Advanced Materials Center. This collaboration between the academic department and the university’s computer infrastructure was noted by the review board as a positive factor in the potential for success.
The Center of Economic Excellence in Optoelectronics will strengthen Clemson’s photonics research program that exists in the Center for Optical Materials Science and Engineering Technologies. The proposed chair, which will be housed in the department of electrical and computer engineering, will lead that department’s initiative in hiring additional optoelectronics faculty members.
The addition of a $4 million chair to an already internationally reputable program will enable Clemson to recruit a world-class faculty leader to the state and to the collaborative research environment that the review board noted as a particular strength of Clemson’s proposal.
“Taken individually, these centers and associated chairs represent significant advancement in research strength for Clemson University,” President James F. Barker said. “Together they show the kind of synergy we have come to expect from our interdisciplinary approach and an efficiency in combining our research strengths with the objectives and needs of the public and private sectors. We intend to be good stewards of the investment in Clemson University by the state of South Carolina through this funding and by the private sector that will provide matching funds. We are very grateful that the review board saw the strength of these proposals, and we are eager to move forward with what they will enable us to do at Clemson.”
Clemson also was included in a $5-million funding package that supports a Center of Economic Excellence in Advanced Tissue Biofabrication led by the Medical University of South Carolina with endowed chairs at MUSC, Clemson and the University of South Carolina. The center will focus on collaborative and multidisciplinary studies combining computational and development biology and bioengineering with a focus on vascular regeneration as a basis for tissue generation.
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