GIVING TO CIPS

     State funding once provided as much as 70% of UC Berkeley’s annual budget. Today, it comprises less than 35% of our funding, with 10% of that decline occuring in the last decade alone. Clearly, if we are to maintain our intellectural leadership in Integrative Planetary Science we must look to our alumni and friends for this essential funding. Your contribution will keep CIPS at the forefront of discovery. Your gift can endow a professorship, build dedicated facilities, provide academic opportunities for students, and support our research-- all crucial for building and maintaining a world-class program in Planetary Science.

You may choose to support one of the funds below, or an undesignated fund of your choosing:

Rocky Planet Finder (RPF) Telescope Support
To launch the search for earthlike planets, a dedicated robotic facility is now being constructed at Lick Observatory (see http://mthamilton.ucolick.org/apfcam for a web view of the ongoing construction).  A total of $8.4M has already been secured for the telescope, dome and spectrometer. However, additional funding of $1.5M is needed to complete commissioning and provide infrastructural support for this facility for the inaugural three year search for rocky planets.  The facility’s name and credit for discovery are open.

The Search for Extrasolar Planets
This established fund supports CIPS' Planet Hunting team in their search for other earth-like planets. Geoffrey Marcy, the Director of CIPS and a UC Berkeley Professor, heads the world's most successful planet-hunting team using the Doppler technique his group pioneered. The search for Earth-like planets takes us into terra incognita. It may be that planets like our own, in circular orbits and with temperatures that preserve liquid water, are rare. The discoveries that will emerge from this program will be definitive, giving us the planet masses,  orbits, and  temperatures.  They will inspire humanity and impact our philosophies, religions, and our perspective of Earth; they will rewrite chapters of astronomy textbooks and establish entire chapters of history books.

Endow a Professorship in Planetary Science
We would like to establish a fund to recruit an eminent senior scholar who will provide future leadership to CIPS. Funds to endow a chair would be invested by Berkeley so that earnings and appreciation of the investment provide support for the distinguished faculty member who is designated as the chair holder.

     Contributions can be mailed to the department or made online . Checks should be made out to "The Regents of the University of California" and addressed to: Director, The Center for Integrative Planetary Science (CIPS), Department of Astronomy, 601 Campbell Hall MS 3411, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720-3411.

      The Center for Integrative Planetary Science (CIPS) also welcomes your gifts of stocks, bonds, mutual fund shares, property or real estate, life insurance policies and retirement plan accounts and bequests through your will or trust. Contributions through charitable gift annuities and charitable remainder trusts are also effective ways to provide long-term support. Because CIPS is a non-profit 501 (c)(3) scientific and educational research organization, all donations are tax-deductible and may offer significant tax advantages.

     For further information on how to offer your financial support, please contact:
The Center for Integrative Planetary Science (CIPS), Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, 94720 510-642-3411 or gmarcy@astro.berkeley.edu