Changes at UCI

For decades, Orange County has enjoyed a reputation as a world center for medical device manufacturing. So, you’d think the big university here would be known for graduating young crackerjack biomedical engineers and biophysicists to meet industry demand for new ideas.

Well, not yet. But UC Irvine figures it’s time to change that.

Last year, it plucked Nicolaos G. Alexopoulos out of UCLA’s electrical engineering department to become UCI’s new dean of engineering. It also recruited Shin Lin, the former chairman of biophysics at Johns Hopkins University, as its new dean of biological sciences.

They each hope to hire about half a dozen faculty members in the next year to beef up their departments. “I’m very excited about the potential here,” Lin says.

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Barbara Marsh covers health care for The Times. She can be reached at (714) 966-7762 and at barbara.marsh@latimes.com.