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Digital Innovation for the Public Good

Catalyzing Collaborative Research for High Impact

The UC Noyce Initiative's mission is to advance research collaborations in critical areas of digital technology and innovation to drive informed, ethical and timely discovery for the public good. 
 

It brings together researchers from five UC campuses Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, San Francisco, and Santa Barbara by building community and awarding competitive grants focused in these key areas:

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Cybersecurity

Addressing Society's Needs for Greater Digital Security and Privacy

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Computational Health

Supporting Innovation at the Intersection of Technology, Health Science and Medicine.

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Quantum Computing

Revolutionizing Computation Capabilities to Solve Societies Most Complex Challenges.

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Robert Noyce and Ann Bowers

Robert Noyce and Ann Bowers Legacies of drive and innovation

Robert "Bob" N. Noyce, Ph.D. was a physicist and one of the most pivotal visionaries and innovators of the 20th century. He invented the integrated circuit, more commonly known as the microchip, and co-founded both Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel. Ann Schmeltz Bowers was a technology industry executive pioneer, longtime philanthropist and the wife of Noyce. In 2020, The Robert N. Noyce Trust made a gift to the University of California system to launch the UC Noyce Initiative to honor their legacies.

Read more about their extraordinary lives and legacies.

The Power of Five

The power and potential of the UC Noyce Initiative lies in our cooperative spirit. Together, we are driving discovery around the most pressing challenges and exciting opportunities in digital innovation. Learn more about the Power of Five.

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News

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UC Noyce Initiative Advances Digital Innovation 

  • by Sarah Colwell

Learning more about women's brains, protecting the grid from cyberattacks, exploring the capacity of quantum computing — these are transformational research projects being pursued because of a new, five-campus, University of California consortium called The UC Noyce Initiative. 

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A New Vision for Data Security

  • by Sarah C.P. Williams

In mid-2022, Instagram began asking an assortment of its users to complete a survey about their race, ethnicity and gender. By the end of the year, a huge number of people had filled out the survey, which was part of a new effort to ensure that the social media platform was fair and inclusive.

Behind the scenes, Professor Dawn Song, PhD, an expert in computer security and privacy, was helping ensure that the sensitive data was staying safe while still enabling researchers to analyze it.