Coffee Center Update

The UC Davis Coffee Center is pleased to announce two $500,000 gifts from Toddy and John and Gina Wasson, respectively, to support renovating the Coffee Center building and name two spaces that will be used for coffee education and research.

Toddy’s gift will go toward the Toddy Innovation Lab, a flexible, multipurpose lab space in the Coffee Center building that will be used to test coffee technology. It will be used for experiments involving cold brew, espresso, or anything else that’s needed to meet the demands of the coffee industry. A pioneer in cold brewed coffee, Toddy offers innovative coffee brewing solutions to both home and commercial users worldwide.

Toddy president Julia Leach is a long-time supporter and advocate of the Coffee Center and sits on its advisory board. Since she visited for the first time a few years ago, she has been impressed by its unique environment and hopes the gift will allow the center to continue building renovation and launch new programming.

“We at Toddy love that the UC Davis Coffee Center was imagined as a place to bring together coffee professionals, students, industry leaders and academics for teaching, learning, research and collaboration,” she said. “We want to take part in the activities and research at the center and felt that sponsoring was the right thing to do as an industry leader.”

John Wasson ’84 and his wife Gina are long-time supporters of the College of Engineering and the Coffee Center. Wasson, who gave his first gift in support of the undergraduate coffee lab in 2015, sits on the advisory board for the Department of Chemical Engineering and chairs the College of Engineering’s Dean’s Executive Committee, which assists the college with advocacy, fundraising, strategic plans and programs. He received his B.S. in chemical engineering from UC Davis and has led a successful career at global consulting firm ICF—most recently being named CEO in fall 2019.

The Wassons describe their gift as a “challenge” to encourage others to support the renovation of the Coffee Center building into a 6,000 square foot research and teaching hub for coffee science. Their gift also names the John and Gina Wasson classroom, which will be used for classes in coffee science for both students and industry professionals.

“The facility brings together UC Davis’s world-class expertise in engineering and food science to facilitate cutting-edge research and advanced teaching on coffee in a rigorous, collaborative and hands-on way,” he said. “I’m impressed at how its courses and labs engage such a diverse population of students at the intersection of engineering and one of their favorite beverages.”

The Coffee Center thanks Toddy and the Wassons for their generous support and looks forward to using their gifts to trailblaze as a leader in academic coffee research across disciplines.

John Wasson ’84

To meet the rapid growth demands of our engineering and computer science programs, the new Engineering Student Design Center (ESDC) will include areas to accommodate instruction, student-client collaboration, rapid prototyping and more. This expansion of the current space from 9,000 sq. ft. to 23,000 sq. ft. will allow many more of our outstanding students to learn engineering design and entrepreneurship in a revitalized space. The new ESDC will also house the Student Startup Center, which is accessible to student entrepreneurs throughout campus. When complete, the center will strengthen UC Davis’ position as a world leader in engineering design education.

The new Engineering Student Design Center will be completed in Fall 2022, with new space to accommodate instruction, student-client collaboration, rapid prototyping and more. Groundbreaking for this landmark new facility will be on October 9, 2020. For more information on naming opportunities and ways to partner, contact Leigh Ann Hartman, lahartman@ucdavis.edu.

In April, Lodi, CA-based Diede Construction, Inc. was selected through a competitive bidding process to serve as the contractor for the ESDC renovation. In collaboration with campus’ Design Construction Management unit and college faculty and staff, Diede will finalize the design and construction documents this summer and begin demolition in fall quarter to prepare for building in winter 2021.

To oversee existing operations while guiding the ESDC into its next chapter, the college recently hired Jose Mojica as the new ESDC manager. An alumnus of the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, Mojica worked for the Air Quality Group at Crocker Nuclear Lab, where he managed a group of engineers and student assistants that were responsible for maintaining a nationwide network of aerosol samplers for the Environmental Protection Agency. After his time at the Air Quality Group, he worked for DMG MORI Manufacturing USA Inc. in Davis, where he supported the design of automation cells, horizontal machining centers and general machine production lines.

Mojica manages and coordinates the operations of the center, maintains a safe work environment for students to hone their manufacturing skills and supports staff, faculty and competition teams with their design and manufacturing needs. In addition, he will also provide support for the ESDC during the expansion and construction process by advising faculty and staff on the logistics of how to manage the same number of users and classes with less space during this transition period.

“Despite the disruptions we’re seeing elsewhere, we’ve lost no time on this project,” said Roland Faller, associate dean for facilities and capital planning and professor of chemical engineering. “With an increased need for our 3-D printers and laser cutters to produce masks and other personal protection equipment needed in the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve prioritized our move into temporary swing spaces and kept critical projects moving forward.”