Since 1991, the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) has played a leadership role in developing the UC MBEST Center, a multi-partner research and development center aimed at developing innovative solutions to emerging issues of the 21st Century. The Center brings together the strengths and resources of private industry, state and federal agencies, policy makers, educational institutions, and other partners to address these issues. Key to the vision of the Center are strategic research alliances between and among the regional research and educational institutions and participants in the UC MBEST Center.

UC MBEST Center Mission Statement
           
In recent decades the United States has faced unprecedented changes and challenges to its economic and environmental systems and to its security.  There is a complex interdependency among environmental, economic, social, and political systems that defies simple solutions.  Successful responses to these complex challenges, are increasingly likely to benefit from the development of synergistic partnerships and multi-institutional, interdisciplinary teams.
 
The University of California’s mission is to serve society as a center of higher learning, providing long-term societal benefits through transmitting advanced knowledge, discovering new knowledge, and functioning as an active working repository of organized knowledge. That obligation, more specifically, includes undergraduate education, graduate and professional education, research, and other kinds of public service, which are shaped and bounded by the central pervasive mission of discovering and advancing knowledge.

Consistent with the University of California’s mission, the mission of the UC MBEST Center is to create a constructive environment in which to foster the collaborative and cooperative interaction between public and private education and research institutions, government research agencies, private business, and policy makers in productive alliances.

Academic Strategy: 

The UC MBEST Center is located in a region that is world renowned for its collection of earth, marine and environmental science facilities, programs, and scientists, as well as top level language trainers. These partners consist of more than two dozen universities, government research facilities, and independent research organizations.  They collectively constitute one of the largest research networks in the nation, employing over 1,600 natural and social scientists with the potential to collaborate on innovative science and technology in areas of mutual interest.

Core academic strategies of the UC MBEST Center are to:

1. Develop and maintain strategic alliances among the teaching and research organizations within the Monterey Bay region, to promote innovation, technology transfer and effective policy development. 

2. Strengthen and increase the resources of the existing Monterey Bay regional institutions by attracting complementary organizations and programs to the Monterey Bay research crescent.

3. Focus MBEST activities on regional strengths, remaining flexible and agile as new strengths emerge.   Although initial emphasis has been on environmental technologies, telecommunications, biotechnology and multi-media, recent world events have led to increased emphasis on national security issues that were not initially foreseen.  Therefore the UC MBEST Center’s academic strategy includes flexibility to develop new areas of cooperation as regional strengths, markets, and national priorities evolve.

Development Strategy:

To support the academic strategy, the MBEST Center has prepared plans to develop over 400 acres of land at the former Fort Ord as a university-related research park, with the potential to benefit any of the teaching and research institutions in the Monterey Bay research crescent.  Specifically, development of the UC MBEST Center is focused on the following strategy:

• Plan and foster development projects suitably located and on a scale that serves regional institutions, with land being made available for development through ground lease or sale to developers who can plan, entitle, build, market, and operate facilities.

• Co-locate at the MBEST Center organizations whose activities are consonant with the purpose and mission of the MBEST Center.  These organizations may include:

1. Private and public educational and research institutions

2. Government research and regulatory agencies

3. Private business

4. Public and private service and support.

• Establish and maintain shared activities and facilities at the MBEST Center.

Institutional Context

The UC MBEST Center is benefiting from a region world-renowned for its collection of earth, marine and environment science facilities, programs, and scientists. These partners are made up of universities, government research facilities, and independent research organizations, which collectively comprise one of the largest research networks in the nation.

Over 1,600 natural and social scientists at these institutions and others actively collaborate to integrate innovative science and technology in areas that directly complement planned UC MBEST Center activities.

With a region-wide focus on the study of natural systems and measurement, visualization and communication technologies, connected by a high-speed asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network, the significance of the Monterey Bay Research Crescent as a productive and diverse virtual laboratory is unsurpassed.