Alumni News

2014 News Releases

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Film Project Highlights Entrepreneurism at UC San Diego and on Torrey Pines Mesa

December 22, 2014

A breakthrough today was a crazy idea yesterday. That’s a line from a new film project that documents a student-driven effort at UC San Diego and the research institutions across the Torrey Pines Mesa to help and encourage students to turn ideas and breakthroughs into startup companies. This short documentary film was produced and directed by Dr. Rajesh Grover, an assistant professor at The Scripps Research Institute and a visiting investigator at the J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla, and Kenan Azam, a data scientist in the laboratory of UC San Diego bioengineering professor Shankar Subramaniam. Both are former leaders of the UC San Diego Entrepreneur Challenge for the academic year 2011-12. Full Story

Sensors company founded by alumni wins award for their innovative products

December 19, 2014

Electrozyme, a company founded by a team of engineering alumni at the University of California, San Diego, won a Most Innovative New Product Award from CONNECT. The company has deep roots at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego, where co-founders Joshua Windmiller and Jared Tangney both earned their Ph.Ds. They also worked closely with the von Liebig Entrepreneurism Center and the Gordon Engineering Leadership Center at the school since 2010. Full Story

NSF grant to improve visualization capabilities for the biosciences and geosciences

December 17, 2014

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is partnering with the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego), to expand and enhance visualization capabilities in the bio- and geosciences through a grant from the National Science Foundation. Full Story

UC San Diego Receives $3 Million Award to Help Advance Energy Storage Systems

December 17, 2014

The University of California, San Diego has been awarded $3 million by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to help move innovative energy storage technologies out of the lab and into the market. UC San Diego will help test and validate the performance of ARPA-E-funded technologies through a program called Cycling Hardware to Analyze and Ready Grid-Scale Electricity Storage (CHARGES). Full Story

Researchers generate tunable photon-pair spectrum using a room temperature quantum optics silicon chip

December 15, 2014

A team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego have demonstrated a way to emit and control quantum light generated using a chip made from silicon—one of the most widely used materialsfor modern electronics. The UC San Diego researchers recently described their new device’s performanceonline in the journal Nature Communications, available via Open Access. Full Story

Student Entrepreneurs Find Success with Smart Earplugs

December 11, 2014

When Daniel Lee enrolled in Nate Delson’s Product Design and Entrepreneurship class at UC San Diego, becoming an entrepreneur wasn’t on his radar. But a little more than a year later, Lee and two other students at the Jacobs School of Engineering already have raised more than $450,000 through crowdfunding for their start-up company, Hush Technology. Their product? Smart wireless earplugs that block out external sounds but still allow users to hear their alarm clock and important messages via a smartphone app.Lee, a mechanical engineering major, dreamed up the idea for the earplugs—which also double as a sound machine that plays white noise and ocean wave sounds—during Delson’s class. The class also provided him the tools to take his professional destiny in his own hands and start his own company, first at the Moxie Center for Student Entrepreneurship at UC San Diego and then at San Diego’s EvoNexus incubator. The devices will be manufactured here in San Diego. Full Story

A Sampler of Exciting Stories from 2014 from the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering

December 8, 2014

From robots to rockets and crowdfunding to cybersecurity, 2014 has been a busy year here at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego. Below is a sample of the highlights of the past 12 months. (Be sure to check the Jacobs School press release archive for 2014, Jacobs School blog, and archive of press clips highlighting Jacobs School projects for a more comprehensive list.) Full Story

Helping the Next Generation of Students Come Up through the Jacobs School

December 8, 2014

Mark J. Sally (MS '87, chemical engineering) was professor Richard Hertz’s first graduate student at UC San Diego. Mark received a fellowship to attend UC San Diego where he worked closely with a dynamic group of professors and students that also included Pao C. Chau, now professor emeritus nanoengineering, and David Miller, now professor emeritus, mechanical and aerospace engineering.“They were truly an inspiration,” said Mark who went on to apply his background in chemistry and chemical engineering to the field of catalysis research. Full Story

Triton Rocket Club in Furious Race to Make Campus First University to Launch Rocket into Space

December 4, 2014

It’s Wednesday afternoon, and about a dozen students are hard at work trying to make history in the basement of Jacobs Hall. The students are building a 20-foot, two-stage rocket that they hope will make UC San Diego the first higher education institution to successfully send a rocket into space. They are in an unofficial race against Boston University and the University of Southern California. Both campuses are pursuing the same goal and have launches planned this coming spring or summer. The Triton Rocket Club at UC San Diego is hoping to beat them to the finish line by launching in March. Full Story

Shu Chien Receives U.C. San Diego Roger Revelle Medal

November 20, 2014

University of California, San Diego bioengineering professor Shu Chien has received the Roger Revelle Medal from UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla with the citation: “Shu Chien is widely known as an exceptional researcher, instructor, mentor and citizen of the university and his professional community.” Full Story

Four Computer Science Majors Win 'Best iOS Hack' at USC Hackathon

November 19, 2014

Four computer science undergraduate students won the best iOS Hack at the HackSC competition organized by the University of Southern California Nov. 7 to 9. Josh Anatalio, Noah Martin, Lawrence Luk and Alvin Ho created an app called ezTouch, which allows users to lock and unlock one or more remote Mac computers using an iPhone’s fingerprint scanner. Full Story

Software engineer Debbie Lu Remembers Global TIES Program

November 10, 2014

Software engineer Debbie Lu (BS ’06, Computer Engineering) took a few minutes out of a busy day to talk about her time as a computer engineering student at UC San Diego. Full Story

Wireless Center at UC San Diego Organizes Forum on Future of 5G

November 10, 2014

Wireless technologies have revolutionized almost every aspect of our lives: the way we work, interact, and socialize. Global adoption and emerging applications are fueling expectations and debate about so-called fifth-generation, or 5G, wireless technologies, and the expectations, needs, and directions for 5G are not as clear as those for the previous digital generations (3G and 4G). The Center for Wireless Communications (CWC) at the University of California, San Diego is organizing and hosting the 5G Forum on Next-Generation Wireless Systems and Applications, bringing together key experts from industry, government and academia to present and discuss their vision and research roadmaps for 5G. Full Story

Engineering Graduate Students Named Siebel Scholars

November 7, 2014

Five engineering graduate students from the University of California, San Diego have been named 2015 Siebel Scholars. Full Story

Engineers and physicians propose new approach to single-ventricle heart surgery for infants

November 5, 2014

A schematic of an industrial ejector pump. This device transfers the energy of flow withhigher pressure to the flow with lower pressure, hence elevating the pressure at the outlet. Based onthe same concept, flow through the SVC can be assisted by flow through the shunt to obtain a higherpressure at the PA without increasing SVC Full Story

Two UC San Diego Engineers to Speak at Founders Celebration Nov. 13

November 5, 2014

Two professors at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego will be speaking at the campus’s Founders Celebration, Thursday, Nov. 13, 2014. Eugene Pawlak, a professor of mechanical engineering and alumnus of UC San Diego, will speak about “Turbulence: chicken soup for the coral reef soul.” Bill Griswold, a professor of computer science, will talk about “Pervasive air-quality monitoring via the crowd.” Full Story

Thirteen UC San Diego Startups Present at National CTO Forum

November 5, 2014

Thirteen startups from across the University of California, San Diego are presenting their work to CTOs and CIOs from around the nation this week, as part of a CTO Forum event. The UC San Diego startups are part of a larger group of 24 startups from the University of California system that are participating in the CTO Forum event. Full Story

New Solar Power Material Converts 90 Percent of Captured Light into Heat

October 28, 2014

A multidisciplinary engineering team at the University of California, San Diego developed a new nanoparticle-based material for concentrating solar power plants designed to absorb and convert to heat more than 90 percent of the sunlight it captures. The new material can also withstand temperatures greater than 700 degrees Celsius and survive many years outdoors in spite of exposure to air and humidity. Their work, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot program, was published recently in two separate articles in the journal Nano Energy. Full Story

ARCS Foundation Awards $232,500 in Fellowships for UC San Diego Graduate Students

October 27, 2014

Dustin Richmond, a third-year graduate student in computer science and engineering, builds complex computer hardware systems with the power to process large data sets—such as the data involved with DNA sequencing. In his first year, Richmond worked with technology company Cognex to design an ultra-high-speed image processing pipeline—specifically for active 3D scanners—that could decompress and process 20,000 images per second. He is one of 31 UC San Diego graduate students who have been awarded a fellowship from the San Diego chapter of ARCS Foundation, Inc. for the 2014-2015 academic year. Members of the San Diego chapter presented the award check, totaling $232,500, to Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla on Oct. 13 at the Ida and Cecil Green Faculty Club at UC San Diego. Full Story

With Phased-Array Radar Technologies, UC San Diego Electrical Engineers Aim to Make Car Travel Safer

October 27, 2014

Electrical engineers from UC San Diego have developed hardware for a new generation of automotive radar systems designed to keep drivers, and the pedestrians around them they may not see, safe. Full Story

Jacobs School alum and Facebook engineer talks about 'Safety Check' feature

October 23, 2014

When disaster strikes, we want to know that our loved ones are safe, but sometimes it can be hours before we are sure. Peter Cottle, a Jacob’s School alumnus, B.S. ’11, has helped make the process a bit simpler. Cottle is a software engineer at Facebook and the creator of the new feature “Safety Check,” which the site launched in October 2014. On Oct. 20, he gave a talk to UC San Diego students about the concepts behind the feature and why it was developed. Full Story

UC San Diego students help design toddler-tantrum-proof plate

October 22, 2014

It’s a scene that many parents have witnessed, helplessly. It’s time for dinner and your toddler is getting restless. The object of their wrath? The dinner plate, which goes flying off the table and spills its contents all over the floor. A group of mechanical engineering undergraduate students at the University of California, San Diego helped a San Diego entrepreneur come up with a solution to this problem. It’s called the Adi, the stay-put plate. Full Story

Robotics Legends Converge at UC San Diego Forum

October 16, 2014

After the industrial revolution and the Internet revolution, we are now poised for the robotics revolution. Influential robotics researchers and industry leaders made this prediction in many different ways on Friday at the Contextual Robotics Technologies International Forum. The speakers and more than 250 attendees gathered to reflect on what opportunities and challenges this revolution would bring, and how San Diego fits into this picture. Full Story

Students, Faculty Celebrate Women in Computing

October 13, 2014

Nearly 40 students from the University of California, San Diego – most of them affiliated with the university’s chapter of Women in Computing – attended the 2014 Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing Oct. 8 tp 10 in Phoenix, Ariz For two of the undergraduates majoring in computer science, it was also an opportunity to showcase research projects in the area of sketch recognition. Full Story

Team Internship Program: Building the next generation of engineers.

October 7, 2014

They worked on the next generation of drones for 3D Robotics. At Cubic Transportation Systems, they created applications to allow public transit users to enhance their mobility and pay fares on their own mobile devices. At UTC Aerospace Systems, they re-engineered the designs for manufacturing aircraft parts. In all, 330 students participated in the Team Internship Program at the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego this summer. They worked for 42 companies in the United States and around the world, including Yahoo!, Qualcomm and Solar Turbines, among many others. Full Story

UC San Diego to Host Contextual Robotics Forum on October 10

September 29, 2014

The University of California, San Diego will host a robotics forum on October 10, 2014. The eight headlining speakers are world leaders in robotics disciplines that are relevant for the coming era of ubiquitous consumer robotics Full Story

UC San Diego Researchers Build First 500 GHz Photon Switch

September 10, 2014

Electrical engineers at UC San Diego have built the first 500 Gigahertz (GHz) photon switch. “Our switch is more than an order of magnitude faster than any previously published result to date,” said UC San Diego electrical and computer engineering professor Stojan Radic. “That exceeds the speed of the fastest lightwave information channels in use today.” Full Story

Benefunder to Launch New Funding Channel for Higher Education Research

September 10, 2014

UC San Diego electrical engineering professor Gert Lanckriet is a co-founder of Benefunder, a San Diego-based philanthropic research funding platform for higher education institutions. Full Story

Researchers find security flaws in backscatter X-ray scanners

August 19, 2014

A team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego, the University of Michigan, and Johns Hopkins University have discovered several security vulnerabilities in full-body backscatter X-ray scanners deployed to U.S. airports between 2009 and 2013. In laboratory tests, the team was able to successfully conceal firearms and plastic explosive simulants from the Rapiscan Secure 1000 scanner. The team was also able to modify the scanner operating software so it presents an “all-clear” image to the operator even when contraband was detected. Full Story

COSMOS program celebrates 10th anniversary

August 19, 2014

What have you accomplished over the past four weeks? Made your own biodiesel? Miniaturized a pollution particle counter? Created an app for the color-blind? No? Then you’re probably not in the COSMOS program. The California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science (COSMOS) is a four-week residential summer program designed for talented and motivated high school students – students so motivated they’re not afraid to dream big, technologically speaking, to take on some of the world’s most difficult problems. The program celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. Full Story

UC San Diego Professor Awarded $300K for Mobile Health Lab-on-Chip Technology

August 4, 2014

University of California, San Diego Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Shaya Fainman has been awarded $300,000 from the National Science Foundation to develop a portable device with a disposable cartridge “lab-on-chip” (CLOC). The device will use bodily fluids to help people determine if they have a viral or bacterial infection or are experiencing an allergic reaction. Full Story

Tumor Suppressor Mutations Alone Don't Explain Deadly Cancer

August 1, 2014

Although mutations in a gene dubbed “the guardian of the genome” are widely recognized as being associated with more aggressive forms of cancer, physicians and bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have found evidence suggesting that the deleterious health effects of the mutated gene may in large part be due to other genetic abnormalities, at least in squamous cell head and neck cancers. The study, published online Aug. 3 in the journal Nature Genetics, shows that high mortality rates among head and neck cancer patients tend to occur only when mutations in the tumor suppressor gene coincide with missing segments of genetic material on the cancer genome’s third chromosome. Full Story

UC San Diego Engineering Graduates Aim For Game-Changing Green Chemistry

July 29, 2014

San Diego-based company Genomatica, co-founded by UC San Diego bioengineering alumnus Christophe Schilling, sustainably produces chemicals essential in the manufacture of thousands of products from fabrics to plastics. Full Story

Computer Science Ph.D. Student's 'Unconventional Odyssey' to SMART Fellowship

July 29, 2014

Natalie Larson has three years to finish her Ph.D. in computer science at the University of California, San Diego, and she wasn’t entirely certain where she would find the support to complete her degree. But now she is. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded Larson a Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation (SMART) Fellowship, which will cover all of her costs for the next three years in return for a commitment to work the next two summers and at least three years in a DoD lab after graduating in 2017. Full Story

Liangfang Zhang Receives Allan P. Colburn Award from AIChE

July 24, 2014

University of California, San Diego nanoengineering professor Liangfang Zhang has received the AIChE Allan P. Colburn Award for Excellence in Publications by a Young Member of the Institute, which recognizes significant contributions to chemical engineering by researchers under 36. Zhang is being recognized for “outstanding contributions to biomimetic nanomaterials for drug delivery to improve the treatments of cancers and infectious diseases.” Full Story

A GEM of a Prize

July 17, 2014

Two physician-engineer teams from UC San Diego have been selected as the 2014 recipients of the Galvanizing Engineering in Medicine (GEM) awards from the Clinical and Translational Research Institute (CTRI) and the Institute of Engineering in Medicine (IEM). GEM, an initiative of UC San Diego's CTRI and IEM, supports projects that identify clinical challenges for which engineering solutions can be developed and implemented to improve health care. Full Story

Outstanding students, professor recognized at 2014 Ring Ceremony

July 3, 2014

More than 340 of this year’s 700 graduating seniors attended this year’s Ring Ceremony at the Jacobs School of Engineering. They heard from Qualcomm CEO Steven Mollenkopf, who served as the keynote speaker, as well as from student speakers Pooja Makhijani, former president of the Triton Engineering Student Council and bioengineering major, and Neha Shekhar, also a bioengineering major. Kevin Yin, TESC’s vice president of finance, served as master of ceremonies. Full Story

SDSC's kc claffy Receives Annual IEEE Internet Award

July 3, 2014

kc claffy, the principal investigator and co-founder of the Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) based at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, has been awarded the latest IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Internet Award. Full Story

Improving Human-Centered Design Skills? There's a Class for That

June 27, 2014

More than 24,000 people have signed up to take a course on “Human-Computer Interaction” that the University of California, San Diego will offer through the Coursera online network this summer. The course begins Monday, June 30 and will run through August 24, 2014. Full Story

UC San Diego to Launch New Master's Program in Data Science and Engineering

June 25, 2014

The University of California, San Diego has announced a new master’s degreeprogram in Data Science and Engineering, intended for working professionals with a broad educational background and/or training in computer science, engineering, or mathematics. Full Story

Outstanding Graduates from Class of 2014 Share Their Stories

June 18, 2014

Engineering swept the outstanding student awards at this year's All Campus Graduation Celebration. Damini Tandon, a bioengineering major, was recognized as outstanding undergraduate student for her efforts to make health education and medical treatment accessible. Michael Porter, a Ph.D. student in the research group of materials science professor Joanna McKittrick, received the outstanding graduate student award for his academic achievements and his mentoring. Full Story

Nanoshell Shields Foreign Enzymes Used to Starve Cancer Cells from Immune System

June 16, 2014

Nanoengineers at the University of California, San Diego have developed a nanoshell to protect foreign enzymes used to starve cancer cells as part of chemotherapy. Their work is featured on the June 2014 cover of the journal Nano Letters.Enzymes are naturally smart machines that are responsible for many complex functions and chemical reactions in biology. However, despite their huge potential, their use in medicine has been limited by the immune system, which is designed to attack foreign intruders. Full Story

Get Involved: Q&A with JUMP Mentoring Program Co-founder

June 4, 2014

Margie Mathewson, a Ph.D. student in bioengineering, is the co-founder of the Jacobs Undergraduate Mentoring Program, better known as JUMP. Within the past three years, the program went from serving 70 students to more than 300. Mathewson is getting ready to graduate and go out into industry. She will be starting work as a consultant for global management consulting firm McKinsey and Co. in Los Angeles in the fall. In this Q&A, she talks about her experiences here at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego and what decided her to get involved. Full Story

Faculty Mentors Inspire Howard University Students to Pursue Doctorates at UC San Diego

May 29, 2014

Last summer, Daril Brown and Nailah Seale arrived on UC San Diego’s campus for the first time as visiting undergraduates from Howard University. They spent eight weeks immersed in bioengineering research alongside UC San Diego faculty and graduate students, while learning strategies for applying to graduate school. Now, both Brown and Seale will return to the La Jolla campus in the fall to pursue their doctoral degrees, thanks in part to the mentorship they received that summer. In addition, each has been awarded a prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support their studies. Full Story

A Snapshot of Success

May 28, 2014

When she first applied for computer science internships, Brina Lee, who had a bachelor’s in communications from UC San Diego and a background in marketing, felt like she’d hit a wall of rejection. Now fast-forward just two years, and with a master’s in computer science from UC San Diego under her belt, she is the first female engineer to have been hired at Instagram, the company behind the popular image-sharing app. Full Story

Outstanding grads 2014

May 23, 2014

More than 1,000 students will be graduating from the Jacobs School of Engineering next month. We couldn’t possibly profile them all, so we asked for help from our faculty to find a few of them that exemplify all the amazing achievements of our undergraduates. Full Story

Computers can spot real or fake expressions of pain better than people

May 23, 2014

A joint study by researchers at the University of California San Diego and the University of Toronto has found that a computer system spots real or faked expressions of pain more accurately than people can. The work, titled “Automatic Decoding of Deceptive Pain Expressions,” is published in the latest issue of Current Biology. Full Story

Remembering Anouchka Mihaylova

May 21, 2014

Anouchka Mihaylova, a project scientist in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, San Diego died on May 17 after being struck by a hit-and-run driver while walking with her husband in Rancho Bernardo. Mihaylova joined the department in 2000, where she was a researcher in the Cardiac Mechanics Laboratory led by bioengineering professor Andrew McCulloch in the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. Mihaylova was a key investigator of the National Biomedical Computation Resource. Full Story

Mechanical engineering student and star diver earns NCCA Postgraduate Scholarship

May 15, 2014

Luke Calkins, an All-American senior diver for the UC San Diego men’s swimming and diving program this past winter and a mechanical engineering major has been awarded an NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship. Calkins, a native of Kansas City, Kansas is a two-time Capital One Academic All-American. The one-time grants of $7500 are awarded to student athletes who excel both academically and athletically and are at least in their final year of intercollegiate athletics competition. Full Story

New Online Voting Platform Aims to Give Public Unprecedented Lobbying Power

April 25, 2014

A new online voting platform developed by UC San Diego alumnus Arshya “Ary” Sharifian and UC San Diego undergraduate Miles Minton now allows voters in North County San Diego to directly lobby their elected officials through weekly polls. Full Story

Closing the Loop on Computer-Aided Design & Manufacturing

April 9, 2014

It seems a bit like a choose-your-own adventure story: You use computer-aided design to create a wind turbine. For 10 years you operate your turbine successfully but then disaster strikes in the form of a 6.8 (moment magnitude scale) earthquake. The decision is yours: Do you have confidence the turbine can continue to be safely operated, or do you decommission it, take your money and run? Full Story

New Venture Capital Fund to Commercialize Innovations from UC San Diego Community

April 9, 2014

A group of alumni of the University of California, San Diego have created a venture capital fund—the Triton Technology Fund—that is specifically focused on commercializing innovations by UC San Diego faculty, students and alumni. This Fund will offer an additional option for UC San Diego innovators looking for the investment and expertise that is often crucial for successful technology commercialization. Full Story

Good Vibrations: Using Light-Heated Water to Deliver Drugs

April 4, 2014

Researchers from the University of California, San Diego Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, in collaboration with materials scientists, engineers and neurobiologists, have discovered a new mechanism for using light to activate drug-delivering nanoparticles and other targeted therapeutic substances inside the body. Full Story

Understanding How the Brain Controls Movement

April 2, 2014

A University of California, San Diego research team led by bioengineering professor Gert Cauwenberghs is working to understand how the brain circuitry controls how we move. The goal is to develop new technologies to help patients with Parkinson's disease and other debilitating medical conditions navigate the world on their own. Their research is funded by the National Science Foundation’s Emerging Frontiers of Research and Innovation program. Full Story

Help From On High: UCSD Students Use Aerial 'Balloon Cam' to Document Racehorse Exhumation

April 1, 2014

The world is getting one last look at the famed racehorse Native Diver courtesy of students from the University of California, San Diego and the aerial camera platform developed by the Engineers for Exploration program, which is based at the University’s Qualcomm Institute (QI). Full Story

Online Course Developed in Computer Science and Engineering Ranks No. 1

April 1, 2014

According to CourseTalk, which tracks user reviews and ratings for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on a worldwide basis, the UC San Diego-based course on Bioinformatics Algorithms (Part I) currently ranks No. 1 among all online courses with ratings. The rankings are based on the course's five-star ranking, and 13 superlative reviews that averaged 4.9 out of 5 points. The course just completed, and students may submit more reviews, so it's difficult to know how long the UC San Diego course will remain No. 1. Full Story

Recent Computer Science Alumna Makes Waves ' Not Photo Filters ' at Instagram

April 1, 2014

It isn’t often that a computer scientist is written up in an international fashion magazine, but an alumna of the Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) department at the University of California, San Diego is taking the publicity in stride. Brina Lee (BS Communications ’08, MS Computer Science ’13) was the first full-time female engineer hired at Instagram. She joined a year ago, and she found herself playing in a much bigger pond following Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram in late 2012. In the latest edition of the magazine ELLE, Lee is quoted as saying, “It’s great now that Instagram is a part of Facebook, so we can leverage all the women here!” Full Story

Cymer Co-Founder Richard Sandstrom and Wife, Sandra Timmons, Give $1.2 Million for Students

March 27, 2014

University of California, San Diego alumni Sandra Timmons and Richard Sandstrom, co-founder of Cymer, Inc., are passionate about their alma mater and helping future students achieve the same world-class education they received at UC San Diego. That’s why the couple recently pledged a gift of $1.2 million to the campus for student support through their charitable Timmstrom Family Fund. The gift will be split, per the donors’ wishes, to support graduate students in the Jacobs School of Engineering and undergraduates through the Chancellor’s Associates Scholars program. Full Story

Facebook Feelings Are Contagious, Study Shows

March 12, 2014

You can’t catch a cold from a friend online. But can you catch a mood? It would seem so, according to new research from the University of California, San Diego. Published in PLOS ONE, the study analyzes over a billion anonymized status updates among more than 100 million users of Facebook in the United States. Positive posts beget positive posts, the study finds, and negative posts beget negative ones, with the positive posts being more influential, or more contagious. “Our study suggests that people are not just choosing other people like themselves to associate with but actually causing their friends’ emotional expressions to change,” said lead author James Fowler, professor of political science in the Division of Social Sciences and of medical genetics in the School of Medicine at UC San Diego. “We have enough power in this data set to show that emotional expressions spread online and also that positive expressions spread more than negative.” Full Story

New UC San Diego Biosensor Will Guard Water Supplies from Toxic Threats

March 11, 2014

Supported by a $953,958 grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), researchers at the University of California San Diego will develop a sophisticated new biosensor that can protect the nation’s water supplies from a wide range of toxins, including heavy metals and other poisons. The project, led by Jeff Hasty, director of the BioCircuits Institute at UC San Diego, will combine next-generation sequencing, synthetic biology, and microfluidic technologies to engineer a highly specific array of biosensors that will continuously monitor water supplies for the presence of toxins. Full Story

Coding for a Cause

March 10, 2014

Sneha Jayaprakash, a sophomore at UC San Diego, is passionate about two things: computer science and social change. As part of the 2013 Microsoft YouthSpark Challenge for Change contest, she developed a winning proposal for a mobile app to engage students with volunteerism and social issues—and received a prize of $2,500 to get the project going. Now, with an additional $10,000 awarded by the Microsoft Imagine Fund last month, Jayaprakash is getting the opportunity to turn her idea into a successful startup. Full Story

Dive into Technology's Future at Research Expo 2014

March 7, 2014

Research Expo will be held on Thursday, April 17, from 1:30 p.m. to 6p.m. Register today. The annual event features research posters by more than 200 engineering graduate students from UC San Diego, faculty talks, and a networking reception with faculty, students, industry partners and alumni. Full Story

How an Entrepreneurial Engineering Education Nurtured a Biotech Startup

March 6, 2014

Identify a real-world problem. Engineer a solution. And, if the solution works, figure out how it can be commercially viable. That’s what Michael Benchimol said he learned over 7 years of working in the laboratory of Sadik Esener, a professor in the departments of NanoEngineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering. In Benchimol’s (Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, ’12) case, it specifically means building a company to advance a targeted drug delivery platform that could make chemotherapy more effective and less toxic to the healthy tissue in the body. Full Story

Jobs, internships on tap for students at engineering career fair

February 28, 2014

The line of UC San Diego engineering students waiting to be admitted to the annual Disciplines of Engineering Career Fair wrapped all the way around the Price Center at UC San Diego Friday, Feb. 21. Dressed in their best business attire and with their resumes in tow, around 2,000 students crowded the center’s ballrooms, where recruiters in search of future employees set up shop. Full Story

Bioengineering Students Recognized for Outstanding Research

February 28, 2014

Several bioengineering students have been recognized for their outstanding research. Full Story

Calit2 Director Honored with Golden Goose Award

February 18, 2014

Larry Smarr, an engineer and physicist whose work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on calculating black hole collisions led him to champion a federal commitment to dramatically enhance U.S. computing power – which in turn led to the development of NCSA Mosaic, the precursor to web browsers – was named today as the first 2014 recipient of the Golden Goose Award, which goes to three or four winners annually. Smarr is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and Director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), a partnership of UC San Diego and UC Irvine. Full Story

UC San Diego Embedded Control & Robotics students demonstrate prowess, connect with industry

January 29, 2014

Miniature unmanned Segway-like robots, known as Mobile Inverted Pendulums (MIPs), appeared to defy gravity as they zipped around laptops and notebooks on just two wheels. In the background, the students who built the MIPs mingled with controls engineers from industry. That was the scene Dec. 5 at the Industry Recognition Night concluding Prof. Thomas Bewley’s popular, difficult, and freshly reminted MAE143c course, in which each student builds and programs a MIP. Full Story

UC San Diego Highlighted in Governor's State of the State Address

January 24, 2014

As Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. delivered his annual State of the State address to the Legislature yesterday, he highlighted the University of California, San Diego as a leader in developing medical and scientific advances. In prepared remarks, Gov. Brown noted, “Four out of the world’s 20 leading academic bioscience institutions are located here in California: UCSF and Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford and UC San Diego. Just as California has led the way with stem cell research, so too can we pioneer the new field of precision medicine which uses genomics, medical devices, computer sciences and other fields to treat individual patients, instead of broad populations.” Full Story

Crowdsourcing a Living Map of World Health

January 21, 2014

What if by collecting data from mobile medical apps on cell phones around the world, we could map significant problems and see the flu coming like a giant whirling hurricane? A team of engineers, biologists and medical researchers at the University of California, San Diego wants to leverage the widespread use of smartphone technology and cloud computing to build maps of large-scale health problems or environmental damage such as the concentration of heavy metals in drinking water. The idea is based on the principle that health, including infectious disease and environmental pollution, is a trackable geospatial event. Full Story

UC San Diego Students Look Back on Fall Field Expedition in Florence

January 16, 2014

When they weren’t traveling to give research presentations or participate in archaeological digs and engineering collaborations in southern Italy or Greece, six graduate students from the University of California, San Diego spent most of the Fall 2013 quarter in Florence through late November. [Note: Much of the data gathered in Florence will be on view at the next Open Lab Night of the Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3). The Open Lab Night takes place Feb. 20 from 5-7pm, and the public is invited to meet with the students and researchers, and to view results on the center's new WAVE curved 3D display system.] Full Story

Calling All Girls: Coding Is Cool!

January 15, 2014

The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, in a partnership with other local universities and industry support groups, is launching a non-profit collaborative community program aimed at encouraging and educating young women to learn and apply computing skills. The program, called GirlTECH San Diego, is being launched this month by a partnership that so far includes UC San Diego, San Diego State University, the University of San Diego, and Point Loma Nazarene University. Workshops will begin later this quarter. Full Story