News Release

Jacobs School of Engineering institutional highlights 2021

December 16, 2021--As we prepare to hit the ground running in 2022, we're looking back at all that our students, staff, faculty and partners accomplished last year toward our mission to leverage engineering and computer science for the public good. Here are a few of our UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering highlights from 2021, including launching new programs and research centers, welcoming new faculty, and preparing our new building.

Check out our 2021 research highlights here. 

#9 ranking: For the second year in a row, the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering was ranked the #9 engineering school in the nation, according to the U.S. News & World Report Rankings of Best Engineering Schools. This #9 ranking is up from #11 two years ago, #12 three years ago, #13 four years ago, and #17 five years ago. “Ranking ninth in the nation is a tribute to the hard work, grit and excellence of our students, staff, faculty, industry partners, collaborators and friends," said Albert P. Pisano, Dean of the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. "I look at rankings as recognition rather than definition. It's wonderful to be recognized for some of the ways we are strengthening and growing as a school and as a community."

Franklin Antonio Hall nears completion: Franklin Antonio Hall is expected to be open and operational in the spring of 2022. The facility will serve as a model for how to build innovation ecosystems with physical roots and virtual infrastructure that extend opportunities well beyond the walls of the building. The diverse yet complementary research teams in the 180,000SF building will develop platform technologies that can be pivoted from one application to another to rapidly respond to the needs of the country. Jacobs School Dean Albert P. Pisano shares his vision for Franklin Antonio Hall in this video.

New Faculty: The Jacobs School hired 27 new faculty in the past two years. These professors are among the nearly 140 faculty who have joined the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering in the last eight years. These new faculty and the bold research they pursue will further the Jacobs School’s mission of leveraging engineering and computer science for the public good. “We are a young, powerful school because we have added cohort after cohort of energetic, imaginative, bold new faculty. I am very much looking forward to seeing the impact they will make,” said Pisano. 

Highly Cited researchers: UC San Diego is home to the 9th largest number of highly cited researchers in the world. The Jacobs School is proud of the 10 engineers and computer scientists who were named among the world's most influential researchers in their fields according to the 2021 Clarivate listing of Most Highly Cited Researchers in the World.

NextProf Pathfinder: In an effort to diversify the ranks of engineering faculty, the Jacobs School partnered with the University of Michigan to strengthen the NextProf Pathfinder program. The two-day program is aimed at first and second-year PhD students, as well as students in masters programs, in an effort to keep them pursuing careers in academia. The two schools will partner on the NextProf Pathfinder program going forward, with the institutions swapping hosting duties each year; UC San Diego will host the workshop in 2022.

Veteran Forge: The Jacobs School of Engineering launched Veteran Forge, a new program designed to connect US government agencies, defense contractors, and National Laboratories with military veterans earning engineering and computer science degrees at UC San Diego. The program aims to provide a job upon graduation at one of the Veteran Forge partner organizations to qualifying student veterans at the Jacobs School, while at the same time offering partner organizations access to top talent that is qualified for required security clearances.

Power Management Integration Center: Innovations in power electronics systems will enable the mobile/IoT devices, EVs, data centers & energy grids of the future. UC San Diego is helping drive these innovations as a new member of an industry-university partnership called the Power Management Integration Center. Directed by Dartmouth College, PMIC is innovating power electronics that support higher efficiency, smaller size and reduced cost. UC San Diego joined PMIC as the second university site. The expanded center has attracted five new industry partners: Allegro MicroSystems, Efficient Power Conversion, Intel Corporation, Meta (formerly The Facebook company) and Qualcomm.

New Large Campus-wide Research Centers

TILOS: The National Science Foundation awarded $20 million for the creation of The Institute for Learning-enabled Optimization (TILOS), headquartered at UC San Diego. The institute will pursue foundational breakthroughs at the nexus of artificial intelligence and optimization to transform chip design, robotics, and communication networks. TILOS includes researchers from MIT, San Diego-based National University, U. of Pennsylvania, UT Austin, and Yale; partial support is from Intel. TILOS is led by Andrew Kahng, a world-renowned expert in the field of chip design and professor of computer science and electrical engineering at UC San Diego. The Institute will be housed at the Halicioglu Data Science Institute (HDSI), UC San Diego’s campus hub for data science and artificial intelligence.

Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance: UC San Diego was one of six institutions invited to participate in the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, a scientific collaboration that aims to transform human health and well-being on a global scale through the discovery and translation of the biological principles underlying peak human performance. The Alliance was created through a $220M philanthropic investment from the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation. Partner institutions include Stanford; Boston Children’s Hospital, a Harvard Medical School Affiliate; U. of Kansas; U. of Oregon; and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. The UC San Diego arm of the Alliance is led by Andrew McCulloch, a professor in the departments of Bioengineering and Medicine at UC San Diego and director of UC San Diego’s campus-wide Institute of Engineering in Medicine.

Center for Admixture Science: Disease prevalence and severity can vary considerably across racial and ethnic groups due to genetic and social factors. However, most of what we know about the genetics of human disease comes from datasets of predominantly white, European people. To address this issue, researchers at University of California San Diego, including computer science professor Melissa Gymrek, have been awarded $11.7 million to launch the Genetic & Social Determinants of Health: Center for Admixture Science and Technology.

Treating drug-resistant epilepsy: The National Institutes of Health has awarded a $12.25 million grant to the University of California San Diego to develop and enhance brain-sensing and brain-stimulating platform technologies to enable treatment of drug-resistant epilepsy. The project is led by UC San Diego electrical engineering professor Shadi Dayeh who leads the Integrated Electronics and Biointerfaces Laboratory and brings together expertise from all across UC San Diego, including the Jacobs School of Engineering and Health Sciences. The nation-wide team includes researchers and longtime collaborators of Dayeh at Massachusetts General Hospital led by Dr. Sydney Cash and Oregon Health & Sciences University led by Dr. Ahmed Raslan.

Media Contacts

Katherine Connor
Jacobs School of Engineering
858-534-8374
khconnor@ucsd.edu