Alumni News
2017 News Releases
Company Based on UC San Diego Technology Gets Infusion of Capital
December 15, 2017
Tortuga Logic, a hardware security company co-founded by computer science professor and Qualcomm Institute academic participant Ryan Kastner and two computer science alumni, is now positioned for new growth thanks to $2 million in seed funding from a venture-capital firm. Tortuga Logic offers a suite of hardware design tools to identify security vulnerabilities throughout the process of designing a semiconductor, including Prospect and Unison (used in the semiconductor, aerospace and defense industries). With its new funding, Tortuga Logic will develop new products and increase the feature sets of existing products. Full Story
Smart earplug company developed by UC San Diego undergrads acquired by Bose
December 7, 2017
Hush, a noise-cancelling smart earplug startup that was conceptualized by UC San Diego engineering undergraduates in professor Nate Delson’s Product Design and Entrepreneurship class has been acquired by audio giant Bose. Full Story
Franklin Antonio, UC San Diego alumnus and Qualcomm co-founder, gives $30M toward new campus engineering building
November 17, 2017
University of California San Diego alumnus and Qualcomm co-founder Franklin Antonio is donating $30 million to the university in support of programmatic expansion of the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. In recognition of the generous gift, UC San Diego will name a planned building for engineering research and education Franklin Antonio Hall. Full Story
Alan Turing Memorial Scholarship Celebrates Diversity in Computer Science
September 28, 2017
The Center for Networked Systems (CNS) at UC San Diego established the Alan Turing Memorial Scholarship in 2015 to encourage a more diverse community in computer science education and research. The award honors the memory of Alan Turing, the mathematician and cryptanalyst who founded the field of computer science. During World War II, he devised the techniques that led to breaking codes produced by Germany’s Enigma machine—a breakthrough credited with accelerating the Allied victory by more than a year. After the war, he was persecuted for being gay. He died by his own hand in 1954. Full Story
When Artificial Intelligence is Funny
September 15, 2017
What do you do if you’re an animal shelter and have to name a big litter of guinea pigs that suddenly become available for adoption and need to be named? Why, contact Janelle Shane, who earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at UC San Diego, of course. Shane works on lasers in her day job, but her hobby is using neural networks to create paint color names, band names and much more.Her efforts have received an onslaught of media coverage, from Gizmodo, to Wired, to The Atlantic Online. When the Morris Animal Refuge in Portland, Ore., came to her, Shane agreed. Full Story
A $100K gift from Cognex to UC San Diego Supports Research at Intersection of Deep Learning and 3-D Image Reconstruction
August 18, 2017
The University of California San Diego has received a $100K gift from Cognex Corporation, a leader in machine vision. The gift will allow teams of professors and graduate students at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering to explore research at the intersection of deep learning and 3-D image reconstruction. Full Story
Engineers talk VR, AI and nanotechnology at San Diego Comic-Con
July 20, 2017
It’s not every day that engineers get to speak side by side with the people behind hit movies and TV series. But that is exactly what two engineering faculty members are doing this week at Comic-Con in San Diego. Full Story
Engineer's Lifelong Dream of Becoming an Astronaut Comes True
June 7, 2017
An alumnus of the University of California San Diego is part of the new class of astronauts NASA announced June 7, 2017. Robb Kulin earned his master’s and PhD degrees in materials science from UC San Diego. He made nearly every decision in his career with an eye toward going to space, according to his Ph.D. advisor, nanoengineering professor Kenneth Vecchio from the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. Full Story
Triton Entrepreneur Night: Pitch Perfect
May 10, 2017
Sensors that tell you if Chinese food from last weekend is still safe to eat. An app to let your professor know you have no idea what he’s talking about. A grocery store guide to find the exact aisle and shelf location of your favorite cereal. These aren’t just crazy ideas — they’re actual startups currently in development in The Basement, UC San Diego’s two-year-old incubator and accelerator program managed by the UC San Diego Alumni Office. Full Story
Nanoparticles for treating bacterial infections take top prize at Research Expo 2017
April 24, 2017
B.J. (Byungji) Kim, a materials science and engineering graduate student at the University of California San Diego, won the grand prize at Research Expo 2017 for her work on nanoparticles that help the body’s immune system fight infections caused by Staphylococcus aureus bacteria—without the use of antibiotics. Kim received the Lee Rudee Outstanding Poster Award and a $1,000 cash prize, as well as the Katie Osterday Best Poster in mechanical engineering, which came with a $500 cash prize. Full Story
Family honors legacy of Jacobs School alumnus Sho Funai with an endowed prize
April 11, 2017
By the age of 23, Sho Funai had already embarked on a promising engineering career. His research contributed to aspects of safely using composite materials such as those found on the newest Boeing aircraft. After graduating magna cum laude with a bachelor’s in structural engineering at the University of California San Diego, he went on to earn a master’s at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego and started working full time at Goodrich Aerostructures. He was weeks away from submitting his master’s thesis on impact damage to composite materials when his life, full of promise was cut short in a hit and run collision in March 2012. Full Story
UC San Diego Designated as a Changemaker Campus
April 6, 2017
The University of California San Diego has been designated as a Changemaker Campus by Ashoka U for its role as a leader in social innovation education. Only 40 universities around the world have received this designation and UC San Diego is the first University of California campus to be recognized. Full Story
Alumnus Taner Halicioglu Kicks off Campaign for UC San Diego with $75 Million Gift
March 27, 2017
As a child, Taner Halicioglu discovered how things worked by dissecting electronic equipment—it could be a radio or walkie talkie, and even a TV at one point. At UC San Diego, the self-described nerd didn’t mind that the campus lacked a football team—access to the Supercomputer Center was just as exciting. And today, he is a visionary: with a $75 million gift, Halicioglu will ensure that his alma mater represents the future of data science. Full Story
Reinventing the Wheel: Former Triton Racing members invent novel public health device
January 11, 2017
What do race cars, aerospace engineering and HIV/AIDS have in common? They all played a part in the making of FluxErgy, a medical diagnostics company started by two UC San Diego aerospace engineering alumni. Full Story
Software system labels coral reef images in record time
January 10, 2017
Computer scientists at the University of California San Diego have released a new version of a software system that processes images from the world’s coral reefs anywhere between 10 to 100 times faster than processing the data by hand.This is possible because the new version of the system, dubbed CoralNet Beta, includes deep learning technology, which uses vast networks of artificial neurons to learn to interpret image content and to process data.CoralNet Beta cuts down the time needed to go through a typical 1200-image diver survey of the ocean’s floor from 10 weeks to just one week—with the same amount of accuracy. Coral ecologists and government organizations, such as the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, also use CoralNet to automatically process images from autonomous underwater vehicles. The system allows researchers to label different types of coral and whether they’ve been bleached, different types of invertebrates, different types of algae—and more. In all, over 2200 labels are available on the site. Full Story