I am pleased to announce information about the outcome of our fourth round of the High Impact Hiring Plan, which leverages our resources to develop UCI as an innovative and transformative university committed to inclusive excellence.

In November 2015, four complete proposals were submitted and fully vetted by the Academic Planning Group, the deans and the ADVANCE Program Advising Committee. Ratings and extended deliberations on the proposals produced detailed recommendations that were extremely helpful in assessing each of them.
At this time, my office is working with the proposers and campus partners to explore the feasibility of implementing one of the proposals, the Convergence Optical Science Initiative. It is well-aligned with the spirit of the HIHP, promising interdisciplinary and transformative impact; moreover, the initiative promotes the campus’s convergent science goals.

However, the review process identified a series of issues that need to be addressed before the campus will commit to funding this proposal. I have already begun consulting with the authors and the deans of the involved schools to develop a detailed understanding of the costs and space needs involved in order to address them.

The proposals received in this process were inventive and extraordinary, and I want to thank everyone for the time and effort that went into preparing and reviewing them. I look forward to announcing the next round of HIHP in late February and reviewing the next set of proposals this spring.

Sincerely,

Enrique J. Lavernia
Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor
Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science