The University of California, Santa Barbara's international status and the eminence of its faculty are widely recognized and celebrated. UCSB's renowned faculty numbers include about 900 professors and also dozens of elected members or fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Recognition of academic quality takes many forms. One of the most prestigious is support from the National Science Foundation. The University of California, Santa Barbara is home to 11 national centers and institutes, including eight that are sponsored by NSF. For example, the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics brings together the world's foremost theorists to study problems overlapping the specialized subfields of the discipline.

The University of California, Santa Barbara was selected as one of the first California Institutes for Science and Innovation. The California NanoSystems Institute, a research partnership between UCSB and UCLA, is receiving $100 million in state funds, which will be matched two-to-one by private industry. The institutes are expected to produce scientific advances in fields critical to the future of California's economy.