Dean's Message
In memoriam: Franklin Antonio
May 2022
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I'm extremely sad to share that our alumnus, friend, and collaborator, Franklin Antonio, recently passed away. Franklin Antonio – a co-founder of Qualcomm – was a staunch advocate for our students and a generous supporter of our educational mission. He donated $30 million to UC San Diego in 2017. In honor of his support for the programmatic expansion of the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, we named our new building in his honor: Franklin Antonio Hall. [Read the obituary in the San Diego Union Tribune.]
I have never been more determined to make good on our commitments. I have never been more determined to ensure that Franklin Antonio Hall truly serves our students through a design that ensures the circulation of people and ideas. That was the vision that Franklin and I co-created during our walks on the building site, and that is the vision that we will deliver.
We just completed the construction of Franklin Antonio Hall this spring, and research teams are preparing to move into the 13 collaborative research laboratories right now. We are also finalizing our teaching, learning, entrepreneurship, executive outreach, and socializing spaces. We will officially celebrate the building opening in September with a campus-wide event.
Franklin will be dearly missed. At this moment, it's hard to imagine the September celebration without Franklin. We will honor Franklin's engineering legacy at Qualcomm, we will thank him for his advocacy for our students, we will never forget his support of the larger mission of the Jacobs School.
More than 40 donors joined Franklin Antonio in support of this machine for innovation. Recently, many of our Franklin Antonio Hall donors came together for the first time in the new building. A dynamic community has self-assembled around the shared vision behind the project, and I look forward to working with this wonderful, ever growing, group of people and companies to deliver on all the positive outcomes that we planned for when we designed this machine for innovation.
Franklin, we will make you proud.
As always, I can be reached at DeanPisano@eng.ucsd.edu.
Read the full May 2022 Jacobs School news email.
Sincerely,
Al
Albert ("Al") P. Pisano, Dean
UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering