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Alumnus’s $30M Gift to UCSD to Go Toward Engineering

It played a central role in the formation of Qualcomm Inc. Now the University of California, San Diego is reaping more rewards from that relationship.

The university announced earlier this month that it received a $30 million gift from Franklin Antonio, who graduated with the class of 1974.

Antonio was one of the seven people who gathered in Irwin Jacobs’ bluff-side home in La Jolla in 1985 to found Qualcomm.

The business would go on to become a multinational chip-making and wireless technology powerhouse with $22.3 billion in revenue. Antonio is currently Qualcomm’s chief scientist.

Engineering Building

The founder’s bequest will go toward a new, 200,000-square-foot building for UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering. University officials expect the building to open in the fall of 2021. Once complete, it is expected to house one-quarter of the engineering faculty and graduate students.

Like higher education institutions throughout the country, UC San Diego is cultivating high-net-worth donors. Its campaign seeks to raise $2 billion in total.

Symbolism plays an important part in the naming of university buildings, the Business Journal reported Nov. 13. The fact that Antonio helped found one of San Diego’s major technology companies carries a good deal of weight.

The process of bringing in a donation is also very deliberate. Negotiations can take time.

Procedure for Naming Facilities

UC San Diego has a six-page policy and procedure manual for the naming of facilities, properties and programs. For new or existing buildings to be named, the donor’s gift must cover roughly 20 percent of the building cost, or the expense of replacing it.

Another benefit of a naming gift is that it can produce ripple effects; it can get other people to think about potential donations.

UC San Diego’s new Antonio Hall will contain a 250-seat auditorium, a high-bay laboratory, classrooms, faculty offices, meeting rooms and a café.

The building will also include 11 collaborative spaces.

The Jacobs School’s plan is to house professors from various engineering disciplines together, with the hope that the proximity will produce new ideas and novel solutions to problems. UC San Diego said it wants its engineers to tackle the toughest problems in health, energy, autonomy and security.

Increasing Staff

The Jacobs School has been growing. During the last four years, it has hired more than 75 professors and increased the number of graduate students from 1,715 to 2,272.

Antonio received his bachelor’s degree in applied physics and information science in the second decade of UC San Diego’s existence.

He then went to work for Linkabit, a company founded by Irwin Jacobs and Andrew Viterbi. The duo of Jacobs and Viterbi founded Qualcomm with the help of Antonio and four others.

By now, Antonio holds 378 granted or pending patents worldwide.

Jacobs, who was Qualcomm’s first CEO, came to Southern California to take a teaching post at UC San Diego. As the years passed, he gave more attention to Linkabit.

When Linkabit was sold, Jacobs turned another page and went on to form Qualcomm. Since then, he and his wife Joan Jacobs have become major supporters of UC San Diego as well as prominent patrons of the arts and culture in the broader San Diego community.

Collaboration Goal

Eleven collaborative research spaces will make up the heart of Franklin Antonio Hall, according to UC San Diego.

The professors within each “collaborator” will come from a mix of academic departments within the Jacobs School of Engineering.

The university said “co-locating diverse yet complementary research groups will encourage the interdisciplinary systems-level collaborations necessary for solving the toughest challenges facing humanity.”

While collaborations are already occurring at the Jacobs School, the addition of Franklin Antonio Hall “will provide much needed space designed specifically to allow unique research collaborations to flourish.”

“It’s absolutely crucial that we provide our faculty and students with the resources they need to learn and to innovate,” said Jacobs School Dean Albert Pisano. “These are the people who will create the next Linkabits and Qualcomms.”

“Collaborations that cross between academia and industry multiple times are critical for developing systems-level solutions to challenges in medicine, energy, security, robotics and more,” said Pisano. “I won’t be surprised when I see our industry partners starting to collaborate with one another in the new building.”

Reporter John Cox contributed to this story.

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