Dr. David Brenner, the UC San Diego executive who has presided over the largest expansion of the health sciences and hospitals in the schools history, has withdrawn his bid to become president of the University of Central Florida.

The 67-year-old Brenner withdrew on Wednesday for undisclosed reasons, according to a report in the Orlando Sentinel newspaper.

Given Dr. Brenners success as a world-class innovator, we are disappointed that he chose not to continue in our process, Beverly Seay, chair of UCFs board of trustees, told the paper.

Brenner turned away from a university that, in many ways, is a lot like UCSD.

Both are public research schools that were founded after World War II. UCSD was created in 1960 and UCF arrived three years later. But UCF surpassed UCSD in growth and now has almost 70,000 students, making it one of the three largest universities in the country. UCSD has about 39,000 students, making it one of the largest in California.

UCF is about 35 miles from Cape Canaveral, Fla., and is deeply involved in research that supports NASA and the rest of the American space program.

UCSD is about 11 miles north of downtown San Diego and has evolved into one of the largest health and life sciences research centers in the country. The university brought in more than $1.5 billion in research funding last year, and more than half of it is overseen by Brenner, UCSDs vice chancellor for health sciences.

He led an expansion boom that that included construction of Jacobs Medical Center and the Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute, where scientists try to speed up the process of turning discoveries into new drugs and therapies.

In 2013, Brenner convinced La Jolla philanthropist Denny Sanford to donate $100 million for a stem cell research facility. Six years later, he got Sanford to donate $100 million for the study of empathy. Last year, Brenner and Chancellor Pradeep Khosla also convinced the UC Board of Regents to approve a new School of Public Health at UCSD.

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UC San Diego executive David Brenner withdraws bid to become president of University of Central Florida - The San Diego Union-Tribune