Last week, the NSF announced UC San Diego as the lead on a $20M artificial intelligence research institute called The Institute for Learning-enabled Optimization at Scale (TILOS). And just a week before that, we celebrated UC San Diego as one of six institutions invited to join the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, launched through a $220M philanthropic investment from the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation.
This NSF AI Institute win would never have been possible without our deep partnerships across campus and in particular with the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute (HDSI), directed by Professor Rajesh Gupta (Computer Science & Engineering; and HDSI). In similar fashion, joining the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance would never have happened without our deep partnerships across campus and in particular with Health Sciences via the Institute of Engineering in Medicine (IEM), directed by Professor Andrew McCulloch (Bioengineering; and Medicine).
In both cases, professors at the Jacobs School of Engineering are leading large, multidisciplinary teams to do things that matter: Andrew Kahng (Computer Science; and Electrical Engineering) leads TILOS, Andrew McCulloch leads the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance at UC San Diego.
I'm so proud to see the collaborative DNA of the Jacobs School shining so brightly. In both cases, entire ecosystems are coming together to address challenges that no one lab, discipline or industry could solve on their own.
Looking beyond these recent wins, we are pushing to the finish line on Franklin Antonio Hall, which is a large, powerful machine that will house a collection of ecosystems of researchers tackling big challenges that matter. From this ecosystem, many more partnership wins are sure to emerge. It's opening soon, in March 2022!
We are running a virtual series to introduce Franklin Antonio Hall and some of the people and projects going into it. You can register here for future events in the series, and see video of the first two talks in the series.
This building is our recipe for future success, and I really feel like I'm still in the kitchen. This virtual series is just a taste of what we're cooking up. And hey, do you want to help? I could always use some help in the kitchen!
The help I could use, of course, is with the building fundraising we still need to do. I'm profoundly grateful to everyone who has helped us so far. Thank you. And if you might be interested in opportunities to help us in our final push across the finish line, please do get in touch. As always, I can be reached at DeanPisano@eng.ucsd.edu
Sincerely,
Al
Albert ("Al") P. Pisano, Dean
UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering