Amazon HQ2

Research & Development University of California, Riverside

UCR expends nearly $150million annually in research and development, with strength in fields of relevance to Amazon’s new and established business areas. UCR was founded as a citrus experiment station in 1907 and it remains a leader in agriculture research, including entomology, citrus, avocado, and dates, and agricultural sustainability. Given Amazon’s recent acquisition of Whole Foods and the growth of AmazonFresh, UCR offers research in agricultural sciences with relevance to Amazon’s efforts in food supply. Additionally, UCR’s CreativeWriting department, which is home to top-notch authors such as Jane Smiley (Pulitzer Prize winner for A Thousand Acres), Reza Aslan (Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth and No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam), and Laila Lalami (Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Moor’s Account), are working with the next generation of creative writers who will contribute to the film industry, including Amazon Studios. UCR’s active research and teaching thrusts include, but are not limited to, Computer Science, Big Data, GIS, and power grid. Several examples are: • Center for Big Data Science: UCR has hired an interdisciplinary cluster of faculty and established

a Center for Big Data Science under the leadership of Professor Vassilis Tsotras in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Initial areas the center will explore include (1) computer science aspects of big data; (2) genome data science; (3) statistical approaches to big data; and (4) big data in astronomy. • Center for Spatial Sciences: The Center represents a major UCR investment in geospatial sciences and is led by Professor Sergio Rey. The Center brings together experts in different areas of GIScience, including spatial statistics, spatial econometrics, open source GIScience, spatial optimization, spatial uncertainty, big spatial data, and related infrastructure. • Smart Grids: UCR’s Winston Chung Global Energy Center is a leader in smart grid research. The Center recently received a $3.2million award, led by Associate Professor Amir Hamed Mohsenian-Rad in Electrical Engineering, from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop technology for receiving, storing, and dispatching electricity from intermittent renewable resources in a grid at the city/regional level. The center is equipped for a wide variety of studies on secure,

reliable, and sustainable electricity for buildings and transportation. • Emergency Management and Communications: Professor K.K. Ramakrishnan is leading a teamunder a new $1.1 million grant from the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology to study dynamically reconfigurable, flexible, resilient communications during emergencies such as natural disasters or acts of terrorism. • Computer Science Graduate Support: The U.S. Department of Education has provided UCR with numerous grants for graduate training, including a GAANN award in computer science. • Fellowships and Internships in Extremely Large Data Sets (FIELDS): Funded by NASA with summer internships at NASA’s nearby Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 80 percent of this $4.5million effort goes directly to undergraduate and graduate support.

Locating Amazon’s HQ2 near UCR offers Amazon access to a talented and diverse workforce as well as ongoing advanced research in topics of interest to Amazon’s future growth.

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