Four major supporters of UC San Diego, including the founder of a prominent San Diego medical device company, and four faculty members will receive major campus awards next month, the school announced Thursday.
The winners of the Chancellor’s Medal include Peter Farrell, whose firm ResMed makes products that treat sleep-related disorders. Farrell has contributed to and remains active in several initiatives at UCSD.
The Peter C. Farrell Sleep Center of Excellence and Peter C. Farrell Presidential Chair in Pulmonary Medicine were both named in his honor.
UCSD said Richard and Carol Dean Hertzberg will also receive the Chancellor’s Medal.
The Hertzbergs gave UCSD $5 million last year to study the effects of climate change and are longtime financial backers of the school. Richard Hertzberg is chairman and president of the energy firm ENPEX Corp.
Other Chancellor’s Medal winners are longtime UCSD supporters Kwan and Marion So, who have helped the school deepen ties in China, and social researcher and public opinion analyst Daniel Yankelovich.
Previous honorees include recently deceased philanthropist Conrad Prebys, Audrey Geisel, and Joan and Irwin Jacobs, who co-founded Qualcomm.
Four faculty members will receive the Revelle Medal. They are:
- Y.C. “Burt” Fung, who helped start UCSD’s bioengineering program and developed the field of biomechanics.
- Veerabhadran “Ram” Ramanathan, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who discovered the impact of greenhouse gases on the atmosphere and campaigns for action against climate change.
- Roger Reynolds, a composer who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1989 and explores harnessing new technology in music.
- And Palmer Taylor, founding dean of the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.
The medal was named for Roger Revelle, the Scripps Institution director who helped establish UCSD.
They will receive their medals during Founder’s Celebration activities Nov. 17-19.
— City News Service
