The University of California, San Diego and the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation have agreed to establish the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination (ACCCHI) at UC San Diego. The agreement was signed in conjunction with the foundation’s annual international Clarke Awards held on April 12 in Washington, D.C.

http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressreleases/uc_san_diego_clarke_foundation_collaborate_to_create_arthur_c_clarke_cente/

Sandra A. Brown, vice chancellor for research at UC San Diego, and Sheldon Brown, professor of media arts at UC San Diego, represented the campus at the formal signing ceremony with Tedson Meyers, chairman of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation.
Sheldon Brown, Courtesy of Sheldon Brown
The Clarke Center will span a wide range of disciplines and collaborations among institutions and individuals across communities and continents in fields such as technology, education, engineering, health, science, industry, environment, entertainment and the arts. Its mission will be to develop, catalyze and be a global resource for innovative research, education and leading edge initiatives drawing upon the under-utilized resources of human imagination. In addition to being celebrated for his multi-disciplinary legacy in science and engineering, Clarke is considered one of the most inspiring and engaging science fiction writers of all time for such classics as “Childhood’s End,” “Rendezvous with Rama” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.” His visionary books and papers have fueled the imagination and avocations of young and old for more than six decades.

“The Clarke Center will be a focal point for active collaboration on current and future research and an intersection of disciplines for the purpose of identifying and advancing creative and innovative solutions for the challenges of contemporary and future societies,” said Vice Chancellor Sandra Brown.

Sheldon Brown will become the director of the center. He is a professor of media arts in the Department of Visual Arts in UC San Diego’s Division of Arts and Humanities and is the former director of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA) at UC San Diego’s California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technologies (Calit2). Associate director will be David Kirsh, professor and former chair of the Department of Cognitive Science in the Division of Social Sciences at UC San Diego and head of the Interactive Cognition Lab research to simplify and extend situational and distributed creative cognition

http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressreleases/uc_san_diego_clarke_foundation_collaborate_to_create_arthur_c_clarke_cente/