The College of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, recognizes the importance of cooperation between industry and academia in maintaining the vitality of both. In turn, many industrial firms recognize the valuable resource that the programs, faculty, and students of the College constitute for them — particularly as a training ground for exceptionally talented young scientists and engineers, and as a source of research that complements their own. In order to access these valuable resources more effectively, many companies support the efforts of the departments of chemical engineering and chemistry by joining the Industrial Friends Program. Such support is an investment in the intellectual and scientific base upon which our future industrial and national growth depend.

Through their membership in the program, Industrial Friends contribute to the support of the pioneering research and outstanding training that have traditionally been the mission of the College of Chemistry. To a significant degree, this financial support is used to fund graduate fellowships. As the costs of research and education escalate constantly, industrial support is increasingly important for maintaining the quality of Berkeley’s programs in chemistry and chemical engineering. In recent years, for example, the state supplied only about one-third of the College’s total budget; many research projects, scholarships and fellowships, laboratory modernizations, and equipment purchases were made possible only by support from the private sector.

The Industrial Friends Program promotes closer relations between the College and corporations by providing a mechanism to facilitate personal interaction between industrial scientists and engineers and the faculty and students of the College of Chemistry.