IRVINE, Calif.—Construction is underway on the $37 million, 70,000-square-foot Gavin Herbert Eye Institute at The University of California, Irvine (UCI). Scheduled for completion in one year, it will house Orange County’s only academic eye center, and it will feature the Irvine campus’s first outpatient surgery center, an optical shop, faculty offices and a conference space. UCI expects the Gavin Herbert Eye Institute to provide highly specialized educational programs for students through access to leading-edge clinical trials and treatments to improve clinical treatment in Orange County.

“With UC Irvine located in the heart of what may be the largest concentrations of eyecare companies in the world, our ophthalmology group has long dreamed of a place that would allow our patients to benefit from corporate innovation and the pioneering research happening at UC Irvine’s Hewitt Hall and the Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center,” said Roger Steinert, professor and chair of ophthalmology and director of the Gavin Herbert Eye Institute.

All funding for the project came from donations beginning in 2007, including from the institute’s namesake, Gavin Herbert, chairman emeritus of Allergan Inc., as well as from Allergan itself, Advanced Medical Optics Inc., Alcon Laboratories Inc., NeoMedix Corp., ReVision Optics Inc., along with a number of private donors.