Dean's message
Engineering Trends
March 2024
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It has been two months since I announced my new dual role as both Special Adviser to the Chancellor for Strategic Initiatives and Dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering. As I dig further into this dual role, I am increasingly energized. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to engage in both high-level strategy and hands-on practicality – both at the campus-wide level and here at the Jacobs School.
UC San Diego is not alone in moving in this direction. Five weeks after my own dual role was announced, MIT announced that its dean of engineering had taken on a new role as MIT’s first chief innovation and strategy officer, in addition to serving as dean of engineering.
Also in February, the journal Nature published an open call for more engineering research submissions to its flagship journal – especially papers reporting engineering advances that scale.
I think it’s important to note the widening circle of institutions, including UC San Diego, that are returning – very publicly – to something that many of us have known firsthand all along: to create scalable solutions to tough problems, engineers and computer scientists must be engaged in the early stages of both fundamental and applied research projects. This is often how big challenges actually get solved.
Just two weeks ago, we announced a powerful move in this direction here at the Jacobs School. I’m honored to celebrate a new $2.1M gift from nanoengineer, entrepreneur and philanthropist Aiiso Yufeng Li (Jeff), together with his family. The gift will empower us to accelerate our vision of enhancing the connection between chemical engineering and nanoengineering research and education here at the Jacobs School. Our vision is to better combine nanoscale science and engineering advances with fabrication-oriented and production-oriented innovations from chemical engineering. Individuals and teams with expertise in both chemical engineering and nanoengineering have far more tools for taking the long view and guiding fundamental discoveries to practical applications that improve lives. This is why I’m so excited for the momentum that is building in our nanoengineering department, which is also home to chemical engineering.
More broadly, when we bring the right people together at the start of projects, scalable solutions that are both economically and environmentally sustainable are far more likely to emerge. In fact, in my dual role, I am helping to facilitate and strengthen these kinds of collaborations all across the Jacobs School and the UC San Diego campus. For example, it’s still early days, but we are having exciting conversations about clinical-grade wearable sensing technologies being employed to transform healthcare into a much more proactive data driven approach focused on prevention. This is just one direction, and the opportunities on our campus are truly limitless. If you have ideas for game-changing collaborations, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Read our full March 2024 news email here.
As always, I can be reached at DeanPisano@ucsd.edu
You can read
Sincerely,
Al
Albert ("Al") P. Pisano
Dean, UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering
Special Adviser to the Chancellor for Campus Strategic Initiatives