Active 1996 - 2018

Sadik Esener joined the UC San Diego faculty in 1987, after receiving his Ph.D. in Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering from UCSD the same year. He served as the director of several centers of excellence funded by DARPA and NIH. Dr. Esener feels his most important contribution was 20+ patented inventions, advising 40+ PhD graduates, and obtaining $50M+ in research funding. Several successful companies emerged from their research activities.

Reflecting on his time at UCSD, his most memorable experience while teaching was when his inexperienced teaching assistant accompanied him to a large auditorium for the first time almost fainted and fell on his knees as he saw the very large number of students he was going to advise during the quarter. Some of the most influential colleagues he met at UCSD are Sing H. Lee, Michael J. Heller, William Chang, Shu Chien, Shankar Subramaiam, Dennis Carson, Liangfang Zhang, Shaya Fainman, S.S. Lau, Yu Hwa Lo, Shaochen Chen, Joseph Wang.

Advice he offers to current students is,"know you are attending an institution with many innovative faculty that are willing to share their collaborative culture." Similarly, to current faculty he offers: "know that you are part of one of the most innovative institutions in the world that is also situated in a wonderful location."

Since retirement, Dr. Esener is the founding director of the Center of Excellence on Cancer Early Detection at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). He still engages with UCSD, discussing and brainstorming with former colleagues and graduate students about their research.

"I have been a graduate student, then a professor at UCSD and witnessed and lived through the amazing transformation to become one of the premier academic institutions in the world." In fact, both of his children are graduates from the Jacobs School of Engineering.