UC Merced and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have long been partners in cutting-edge science and technology.
University students and researchers take part in numerous lab activities such as the Data Science Challenge, which brings students to Livermore to for an intensive two-week summer experience where the collaborate on complex scientific and computational problems. And on National Labs Day, the university connects graduate students and postdoctoral scholars with researchers from national labs across the country, including Livermore.
Now that collaboration has been extended to an exciting new level with a Strategic Partnership Agreement, signed Wednesday, that will bring the two entities closer together than ever before, leading to expanded opportunities for students, researchers and project scientists.
"This is a permanent, visible, articulated and mutually beneficial partnership between the lab and UC Merced," UC Merced Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz said. "My hope is that our futures are inseparable from one another."
Under the agreement, UC Merced and the laboratory will collaborate to advance scientific research, support national and energy security, strengthen California's innovation ecosystem, and educate the next generation of scientists and engineers.
"LLNL and UC Merced have established a deep and productive partnership that positions us both to advance scientific discovery and drive innovation," Livermore lab Director Kim Budil said.
Budil oversees an annual operating budget of about $3.25 billion and a workforce of about 9,000 employees. She is no stranger to the University of California, having worked previously as the vice president for national laboratories in the UC Office of the President.
"Our collaboration creates meaningful pathways for career development that enable our workforce to grow and excel," she said.
The university and the lab will pursue coordinated research initiatives in four major technical areas:
• Advanced materials and manufacturing
• Fusion energy science
• Smart agriculture and environmental biosciences
• Biodefense and human health
The lab and university will explore the development of shared facilities and research spaces at UC Merced that enable collaboration, student training and technology innovation. The proposal includes work space for Livermore lab personnel on the university's campus.
The agreement is aimed at expanding opportunities for faculty engagement, co-taught courses, student internships, micro-credential programs and professional development.
Muñoz and Budil emphasized this is not just an agreement among scientists conducting lab research, but rather a pact to develop solutions to problems facing the region and the world, as well as to educate a workforce qualified for employment at Livermore and other national labs.
"The work we do is meaningful and impactful in a way a lot of scientific research doesn't feel," Budil said. She said the lab has teams working in areas of vital concern to the Central Valley, such as water, food security, agriculture and climate change. "This is not abstract. This is how you can put this type of knowledge, these types of capabilities, to work in the real world."
Those concerns reflect the research interests of faculty at the university, Muñoz said.
"This agreement represents a tremendous reciprocal, cross-pollination in the genius and brilliance of the lab and the genius and brilliance of UC Merced."
He pointed to the university's Medical Education pathway as a golden opportunity for collaboration.
"Imagine the lab being on the ground floor of creating the medical school at UC Merced," Muñoz said. "We will be addressing the question of how we use technology and these platforms to introduce ways to care for people that right now are unimaginable."
