The Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation of Tokyo and UC Santa Barbara announced last week that they are extending their 5-year-old research and education alliance for four more years.

Under the terms of the new agreement, Mitsubishi Chemical will invest from $8.5- to $10-million between 2006 and 2010 in a highly productive campus research unit called the Mitsubishi Chemical Center for Advanced Materials (MC-CAM). The funds will support research as well as the administration of the center.

The total also includes a contribution of $800,000 to permanently endow new graduate fellowships in materials and chemical engineering.

“UC Santa Barbara’s partnership with Mitsubishi Chemical is a wonderful success story, and I am so very pleased that we are able to continue this very productive arrangement,” said Chancellor Henry T. Yang. “The MC-CAM has become an excellent model for university-industry collaboration across the Pacific.”

Directed by Glenn Fredrickson, professor of chemical engineering and materials, the MC-CAM is affiliated with the College of Engineering and the Materials Research Laboratory (MRL), a national center supported by the National Science Foundation. MC-CAM is currently housed in a new wing of the MRL.

Of the $13.5-million initially provided by the company in 2001, $1 million was used to establish two endowed professorships in the College of Engineering and the balance was used to fund the MC-CAM’s first five years of activity, including its new facilities.

Center researchers are involved in creating new materials, devices, and advanced fabrication technologies for the chemical and electronic materials marketplace. The main focuses are materials for display technologies, solid-state lighting, fuel cells and batteries, and polymers for automotive applications, among others.

In its first five years, MC-CAM research has resulted in 33 scientific publications and 30 invention disclosures, which is considered a very high ratio of inventions to publications. Thus far Mitsubishi Chemical has taken options on 26 of those inventions. In addition, the center’s research has led to 9 joint UCSB/Mitsubishi Chemical patent applications.

Ryuichi Tomizawa, president and chief executive officer of Mitsubishi Chemical, said, “This is a partnership that makes good sense for science and for business.”