University of California, Irvine in the context of "Penelope Maddy"

Mario José Molina-Pasquel Henríquez (19 March 1943 – 7 October 2020) was a Mexican physical chemist. He played a pivotal role in the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole, and was a co-recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his role in discovering the threat to the Earth's ozone layer from chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases. He was the first Mexican-born scientist to receive a Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the third Mexican-born person to receive a Nobel prize.

In his career, Molina held research and teaching positions at University of California, Irvine, California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California, San Diego, and the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Molina was also Director of the Mario Molina Center for Energy and Environment in Mexico City. Molina was a climate policy advisor to the President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto.

Frank Sherwood "Sherry" Rowland (June 28, 1927 – March 10, 2012) was an American Nobel laureate and a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Irvine. His research was on atmospheric chemistry and chemical kinetics. His best-known work was the discovery that chlorofluorocarbons contribute to ozone depletion.

The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, the system is composed of its ten campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz, along with numerous research centers and academic centers abroad. The system is the state's land-grant university.

In 1900, UC was one of the founders of the Association of American Universities and since the 1970s seven of its campuses, in addition to Berkeley, have been admitted to the association. Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Riverside, and San Diego are considered Public Ivies, making California the state with the most universities in the nation to hold the title. UC campuses have large numbers of distinguished faculty in almost every academic discipline, with UC faculty and researchers having won 75 Nobel Prizes as of 2025.

Irvine (/ˈɜːrvaɪn/ UR-vine) is a planned city in central Orange County, California, United States, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. It was named in 1888 for the landowner James Irvine. The Irvine Company started developing the area in the 1960s and the city was formally incorporated on December 28, 1971. The 66-square-mile (170 km) city had a population of 318,629 as of June 2025. As of 2025, it is the third most populous city in Orange County, fifth most in the Greater Los Angeles region, and 62nd most in the United States.

A number of corporations, particularly in the technology and semiconductor sectors, have their national or international headquarters in Irvine. Irvine is also home to several higher-education institutions including the University of California, Irvine (UCI), Concordia University, Irvine Valley College, and campuses of University of La Verne and Pepperdine University.

The South Coast Metro is a district in Orange County, California within the cities of Costa Mesa and Santa Ana. The area is a dense mix of residential, office, and retail developments that spreads out from the South Coast Plaza mall. It forms part of the South Coast Plaza–John Wayne Airport edge city, a concentration of business, shopping, and entertainment outside a traditional central business district. The edge city's area is defined to include John Wayne Airport, the Irvine Business Complex (IBC), The District and The Market Place shopping centers, and the University of California, Irvine campus. This larger definition extends into Newport Beach, Irvine, and Tustin.