UCI is one of the fastest growing of the University of California campuses. It has about 18,000 students and 1,400 faculty. It is located in Irvine in southern California in the western part of the United States.

The campus began in the early 1960's as a gift of 15,000 acres from the Irvine Company to the University of California. Aldrich Park, a 21-acre circular park, is at the heart of the UCI campus.

UCI has become a center of innovation, creativity, and economic strength. It is ranked as the 10th best public university in the country in US News & World Reports' Best Colleges 2001.

UCI's faculty have received worldwide recognition for research in many fields including the neurosciences, genomics, cancer, the biosciences, and the medical use of lasers.

In 1995, UCI became the first public university whose faculty won two Nobel Prizes in two different fields in the same year--Frederick Reines in physics and F. Sherwood Rowland in chemistry. (See a Quick Time panorama of Rowland's lab in the virtual tour of UCI).