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Nanoscience research at UCSB has been given a multimillion-dollar boost by a UCSB professor turned businessman who helped transform the field, and by his former wife.
 The California NanoSystems Institute at UCSB will be named Elings Hall as depicted in this photo illustration courtesy of UCSB. Virgil Elings and Betty Elings Wells have contributed $12.5 million to the California NanoSystems Institute. The new building that houses the institute will be named Elings Hall, campus officials announced Monday.
Most of the money — $9 million — will go toward research and education and new laboratory facilities, while the remainder will establish an endowment for the institute.
“It really gives us the funds for visionary new projects in both research and education,” said the institute’s scientific director Evelyn Hu.
Nanoscience refers to work done at a minute scale, specifically with substances at least a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair. Nanotechnology could offer great advances in medicine, information technology, manufacturing and many other fields.
 Betty Elings Wells. UCSB courtesy photo by Randall Lamb. The California NanoSystems Institute, a partnership between UCSB and UCLA, was established by the state in 2000. The CNSI building, near the eastern entrance to the UCSB campus, will now be called Elings Hall in honor of Virgil Elings.
Virgil Elings was a professor of physics at UCSB, where he developed a graduate program in instrumentation, which Hu described as “tremendously visionary.”
He later co-founded a company, Digital Instruments, which made scanning probe microscopes available and reasonably affordable. The microscopes allow scientists to view things on a nanoscale and so “transformed the field” of nanoscience, Hu said. Elings now lives in the Santa Ynez Valley.
 Virgil Elings. UCSB courtesy photo by Jeff Clark During her marriage to Elings, Wells was his business partner and helped launch Digital Instruments. She now lives in Goleta.
Their gift is the largest contribution to The Campaign for UC Santa Barbara, which aims to raise $500 million for the university. A total of $415 million has now been collected.
“This is one of many gifts we are making,” Elings said in a statement, “to give back to the community in which we have prospered.”
Hu said the institute is planning a celebration of Elings' and Wells' contribution and the renaming of the institute's home.
Elings has already had several community landmarks named in his honor: The Elings Aquatic Center at Dos Pueblos High, Elings Fields in Girsh Park and Elings Park on Los Positas Road.
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