The fulfillment of Pereira's insight is most evident today in the Irvine Spectrum, the office and commercial development that is home to 2,500 Companies with 50,000 employees. The companies largely are in information and biomedical industries, and most are relatively small. The research park idea has evolved since 1988, inspired partly by Stanford Uiversity's role in the ereation of Silicon Valley, Orange County has ambitions to take over the role of California's technology center. But there are also larger trends at work, of industrial research and university budgets in the post Cold War period. For half a century, basic U.S. research, through contracts to companies or grants to universities, was funded by the Defense Department.
Government grants are still important, but the totals are no longer growing.
Companies, too, are under pressure in the global economy and no longer undertaking basic research, notes UCI's Cicerone, a nationally renowned environmental scientist. In a way, university-industry collaborations are throwbacks to an earlier time. Before World War 11, DuPont, Eastman Kodak and other firms funded university chemistry departments in hopes of educating chemical engineers and spurring chemistry research. Leading edge inquiry and education in those subjects are centered more than ever in universities of Southern California, from Santa Barbara to San Diego and points between. That holds major promise for the region's economic future.