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October 14, 1996

UC MBEST Center hosts visitors from Los Alamos

UC's Monterey Bay Education, Science, and Technology (MBEST) Center at Fort Ord, widely considered a jewel among national efforts to convert former military bases to civilian uses, continues to attract attention far beyond the Monterey Bay region. The latest visitors: a seven-member team from New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and the Los Alamos Economic Development Corporation.

Los Alamos hopes to duplicate the successes of the MBEST Center by developing its own research park with close ties to LANL. The delegation came to hear about the experiences of the MBEST team, based at UCSC, in developing a center that takes advantage of the strengths of a "research crescent" of institutions around Monterey Bay. The visitors enjoyed a tour of the MBEST Center's facilities; a new state-of-the-art computer classroom facility for UCSC Extension, an MBEST tenant; and real-time satellite images of meteorological data downloaded on systems produced by another tenant, Systems West.

Associate vice chancellor for research James Gill and Mark Coburn, the center's director of technology transfer and business planning, were primary contacts for the LANL visit.

--Robert Irion