Qualcomm co-founder Franklin Antonio died in May of last year, but his generosity still lives on.
Last week, Antonio’s estate gifted $200 million to the Summer Science Program (SSP), a nonprofit that provides advanced science education to exceptional high school seniors. Antonio attended SSP in 1969.
The program was founded in 1959 in Ojai, California and today operates at astrophysics campuses New Mexico Tech, University of North Carolina and University of Colorado Bouder; and biochemistry campuses Purdue University and Indiana University Bloomington.
Antonio was a generous philanthropist, especially to the academic institutions he attended. In 2017, he gifted $30 million to UC San Diego to support the expansion of the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. He was also provided funding and expertise to UC San Diego School of Physical Sciences’ SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) program.
Antonio became the first alumni to have a building bear his name when UC San Diego named Franklin Antonio Hall – a new building for collaborative engineering research and education – in his honor. He graduated from UC San Diego in 1974.
In 1985, Antonio joined Irwin Jacobs and Andrew Viterbi in founding Qualcomm, where he served as the company’s chief scientist.
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The City of San Diego’s Housing Acceleration Program – an effort to speed construction of housing projects, got a boost this month from a $4.8 million in state grant funds administered by SANDAG.
California Department of Housing and Community Development’s Regional Early Action Planning grants are intended to support local governments and developers derive policies to quicken production of housing with a priority on infill development near public transportation.
The money will be allocated to several City Planning Department programs: $2.5 million will go toward a pilot program to provide funding, in the form of fee waivers or fee reductions, for the payment of Development Impact Fees for affordable homes; $1.3 million will be split to fund development of the city’s Affordable Home Development Master Plan and Mid-City Communities Plan Update; $500,000 will fund a guide to assure inclusive community participation on city plans, policies, projects; and $500,000 will fund design guides for building multi-family dwellings in single-family neighborhoods.
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Junior Achievement of San Diego County honored Bill Rastetter this month, inducting the life science entrepreneur into JA’s San Diego Business Hall of Fame.
JA’s Business Hall of Fame recognizes San Diego’s successful leaders who also invest in the community through philanthropy, mentorship, innovation, or other creative engagement.
JA President and CEO Sidd Vivek praised Rastetter for “his commitment to build and support diverse talent pipelines across STEM fields.”
Rastetter, whose resume in the biotech world includes leadership roles at leading firms like Neurocrine Biosciences, Illumina, IDEC, Receptos, Fate Therapeutics, Daré Bioscience and Grail, is also the co-founder of San Diego Squared (SD2), a nonprofit dedicated to increasing diversity in science and technology industries. SD2 partners with
“We have to reach back and empower students to become STEM aware, STEM curious, STEM committed, STEM educated long before they would ever write a resume and apply for a job,” Rastetter told the Business Journal in 2022.
