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September 9, 2002

Media Contact: Ron Durbin, Director of Industry Relations, (858) 534-4034

Information Storage Industry Center (ISIC) Receives $1.5 Million Grant From The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

ISIC Studies the Business Dynamics of the Information Storage Industry;
New Funding to Support Continuing Research Efforts Through 2005

The Information Storage Industry Center (ISIC) at the University of California, San Diego is pleased to announce that the Trustees of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation have authorized a grant of $1,500,000 to the University of California, San Diego for continuing support of ISIC. ISIC will use these and other funds to continue studying the economic, managerial, and competitive dynamics of all segments of the information storage industry.

Roger Bohn, Director of ISIC

"Information storage is a key enabling technology for businesses worldwide, as well as one of today's most exciting and volatile industries," said ISIC Director Roger Bohn. "There are several academic centers focused on the technical aspects of storage. Thanks to the Sloan Foundation, we are now able to continue to look closely at the business side of the industry, including issues related to product development, manufacturing and organizational economics, competitive dynamics, and storage system reliability and data integrity."

Previously, ISIC examined globalization and how it contributed to the dominance of U.S. firms in the hard disk drive industry. Additional research topics included:

• The sources of industrial leadership.
• The strategic behavior of multinational corporations.
• The geographic evolution of industry.
  
• The creation and endurance of industrial clusters.

Much of this research is included in the book From Silicon Valley to Singapore: Location and Competitive Advantage in the Hard Disk Drive Industry, co-authored by ISIC Research Director Dr. David McKendrick. ISIC has also produced numerous academic papers, industry articles, and presentations on these and other topics, many of which are published on the organization's website at http://isic.ucsd.edu.

"So much of America's pattern of living is determined by the health of its industries and its ability to employ people," said Frank Mayadas, program director for the Sloan Foundation. "The Sloan Foundation feels that industrial competitiveness can be studied in an academic setting-and can also have practical value for industry and policymakers. That is precisely why we have invested in industry study centers, such as ISIC. Many industries, including autos and semiconductors, rejuvenated their operations after our centers shared their research and insights."

At present there are 19 Sloan Industry Centers at 15 universities, covering a wide area of the manufacturing and service sectors of the American economy. These include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Program on the Pharmaceutical Industry, the Harvard Center for Textile and Apparel Research, the Wharton School's Financial Institutions Center, and the Semiconductor Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

ISIC is affiliated with UCSD's Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS), one of the world's top international graduate programs specializing in the Pacific Rim. ISIC also works closely with UCSD's Center for Magnetic Recording Research (CMRR) on issues that require a mix of technological and managerial expertise.

About ISIC
The Information Storage Industry Center (ISIC) at the University of California, San Diego is a research center studying the business and economic aspects of the information storage industry. Established in 1998 as an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Industry Center, ISIC conducts research on all segments of this rapidly-evolving and highly-competitive global industry. ISIC is affiliated with UCSD's Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS), one of the world's top international graduate programs specializing in the Pacific Rim. For more information on ISIC, visit http://isic.ucsd.edu.

About IR/PS
Established in 1986, UCSD's Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) is the University of California's only professional school of international affairs and the only graduate school in the United States to focus exclusively on the Pacific Rim. More information on the graduate program and its faculty can be found at http://www-irps.ucsd.edu.

About CMRR
The Center for Magnetic Recording Research (CMRR) was founded in 1983 by a consortium of U.S. companies in the magnetic recording industry. CMRR's mission is to advance the state-of-the-art in magnetic storage, and to produce highly-trained graduate students and postdoctoral professionals. Current CMRR projects include S.M.A.R.T. and iDrive, both of which are sponsored by the Information Storage Industry Center (ISIC) at UCSD. S.M.A.R.T. is the experimental monitoring of disk drive failure warning data, and iDrive studies putting computing tasks inside disk drives. For more information on CMRR, visit http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/.