University and student housing

The last weekend I had some time to go around at the university to take some pictures. The university on its own is with about 40 years one of Americas youngest universities. In the middle of the university is the Aldrich park, it’s very beautiful and you have a lot of green space to walk around, play something or just hang around. In some parts of the park they have even some sculptures to imitate “culture”. As explained before the different departments are arranged around this park in a star like fashion. I on my own am in the engineering’s district or more precisely in the engineering gateway (the white building behind the palms).

Most of the buildings, or lecture halls carry names, as the one of Henri Samueli (whoever he is???). In this case even the whole school is called after him; the Henry Samueli School of engineering and also one of the lecture halls carry his name. Another very important spot for me is the little café just in the middle of the buildings. Its name is Java City and for those who only now java as a scripting language, the name comes originally from a kind of coffee beans.

For those who are interested (or the ones missing be blinded with science) I will lose some words about the cleanroom, or better the cleanrooms ;-) Here they have two rooms, the older one has about 16 zones with different equipment and tools and the newer one has 8 of them. While the zones in the old one are a bit smaller than the ones at EPFL and the ones in the new one are a bit bigger. Because in the beginning there was barely anybody using the new one, they told the people using SU-8 (a photo sensible polymer) to move to the new room. Therefore I work most of the time in the new one. Besides me there are some other people working there, but most time I have the whole cleanroom for me alone :D !!! The cleanroom is “only” a class 1000 and therefore we aren’t forced to wear a facial mask, which makes the working much more comfortable. And people most time spend less attention on generation of particles, so you see them (even the staff) opening their suits and taking out their cell phones etc. And we were told that the boss of the cleanroom sometimes doesn’t use a suite for shorter visits.

But enough of the cleanroom, besides the engineering school you have all the other schools. I don’t know a lot to tell about these ones, so I only post some pictures of nice buildings ;-)




There are two “cafeterias” nearby, in one of them you can get burgers, some salads and Mexican food and the other one has Italian and Mexican food and some wraps. But you can’t get menus as in Switzerland, most of the dishes are fast food. Another address to eat is the student center, where you can get some more food. In the students center you find also the UCI bookstore. Besides books, notebooks, pens and other supplies you also find all the UCI merchandizing articles. There you find everything from sweaters, t-shirts, sports bags etc. to plate holders for the car, glasses. You can get an idea at their homepage. And everything has the UCI logo and Peter the anteater (The mascot of UCI) on it. Just next to the bookstore you find the terrace of the Starbucks coffee, so you can get there to start reading your books.

Another location where you find shops, restaurants, coffees etc. is the University center. To get there you have to cross the University drive (there is a bridge, so it becomes easier to cross the street, since it has three lanes in each direction). In the University center you also find a gym center, several dance studios, different restaurants, where you can get different kinds of food, a cinema, hairdressers, etc. Additional there is a trader Joes, a “little” (only for America, in Switzerland it would be big) store where you mainly get food.

Let me make a remark concerning the street names, most of them are called after other universities, so you see sings announcing Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, etc.




This is most of what I know to tell you about the university, so let’s start with the student housing. As already mentioned I live in an apartment with two others. Our house has about 12 apartments like this and there is a whole street with these houses. It is very nice, because there is arroyo drive, the main street, but only the front houses are on this street. In parallel you have a promenade between the 1st and 2nd of houses and between the 2nd and 3rd row there is grass and you find little places, with tables, chairs and barbecue grills. I live in the graduate part of the residence. Here in America once you finished the Bachelor (which normally takes 4-5 years) you become a graduate student. So the peoples around here are doing their master studies, a PhD or MBA etc. There is a graduate lounge, where you find some televisions, rooms to study etc. and next to it is the graduate house, with a desk if you have some problems and they sometimes have special events. To get to the undergraduate area I just have to cross the street. For the people now asking themselves why I should do such a thing, in the undergrad part you find the community center, where the pool, the gym room, volley and basketball fields, games room etc. are located.