Dean's message
The joys of engineering (and 1.1 million views)
June 2023
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The joys (and challenges!) of engineering are palpable in a new video about our earthquake simulator from YouTuber Tom Scott. The first two minutes of the video set the stage for a fun and enlightening tour of our shake table with operations manager Koorosh Lotfizadeh, who is also a UC San Diego structural engineering alumnus. The video is called “Shake tables are way more complex than I thought,” and it already has more than 1.1 million views. If you watch it, you’ll understand why.
As an engineering dean, I’m especially interested in the conversation that begins at about the two minute mark. That’s when the behind-the-scenes tour starts and we get to see both the joys and challenges of a complex engineering project for the public good. We see engineering theory and engineering practice combined to create and maintain critical research infrastructure. We get a unique perspective on engineering research infrastructure that is being used to help us increase the resilience of our built infrastructure in the face of a wide range of natural hazards – and ultimately help us save lives.
In the Tom Scott video, we also see joy that comes from moments of mutual technical understanding. We see successful communication of both the ‘“what” and the “why” of this complex engineering project. In a past column, I talked about the importance of practice and the importance of finding your "why" as part of engineering and computer science education.
The full-scale 10-story mass timber building being shaken in the video is the centerpiece of the NHERI Tallwood project, funded by NSF. This project aims to increase safety and resilience of future engineered-timber construction techniques for mid and high rises while reducing carbon footprints.
Our shake table teams past and present have achieved incredible feats. The NSF-funded shared-use facility is a powerful example of deep collaboration between our faculty-led research teams and a whole cast of characters including other academic teams, federal and state funding agencies, industry partners, government agencies, and philanthropic donors.
I am proud to see some of the human ingenuity and creativity that is essential for the success of the shake table highlighted in this video. Now more than ever, we need to make sure that wider audiences understand both the “what” and the “why” of university-based engineering projects. Doing this is part of our mission at the Jacobs School to advance engineering and computer science for the public good
As always, I can be reached at DeanPisano@ucsd.edu.
View the June 2023 UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering news email online.
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Sincerely,
Al
Albert ("Al") P. Pisano, Dean
UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering