UCI was awarded a five-year, 1.9 M grant from the PRISM (Proactive Recruitment in Introductory Science and Mathematics) program of the National Science Foundation in August 2009. The PI is JackXin (mathematics). The co-PIs are Hongkai Zhao (mathematics), Sarah Eichhorn (mathematics), and Max Welling (information and computer science).

The goal of the PRISM program is to strengthen the nation's scientific competitiveness by increasing the numbers of well-prepared, successful U.S. undergraduate majors and minors in science and mathematics. The PIs will develop a new undergraduate education and research program at UCI, called UCicamp (UCI Interdisciplinary Computational and Applied Mathematics Program). UCicamp plans to teach mathematics and computation through concrete problems arising from information processing to freshman and sophomore students during the regular school year. Selected number of students will go on to do supervised research in the summer months with full stipend support. UCicamp aims to stimulate the interest of freshman and sophomore students in mathematics, computation and their applications in the digital age.

The PRISM grant is the first major undergraduate education and research grant in the history of UCI mathematics department.