So many engineers and computer scientists of all stripes are contributing to the research and technology advances necessary for developing and disseminating COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics and new methods to study and track the virus. I'm heartened by the technical progress and also adamant that we all must confront the structural and systems-level challenges we face. Technical progress in isolation is not true progress.
Despite it all, we are in the final year of construction of Franklin Antonio Hall, our new building designed to facilitate the kinds of platform-technology pivots critical to today's rapid COVID-19 vaccines.
We designed Franklin Antonio Hall, floor by floor, for strong and rapid responses to emerging challenges we will confront in the coming years.
Linked here and embedded below is a five-minute video clip in which I share part of the vision behind Franklin Antonio Hall.
I am buoyed by our collective efforts and motivated by the knowledge that designing optimal research ecosystems will help to ensure our students and postdocs emerge from academia as the innovation workforce our nation needs.
I look forward to collaborating with many of you on the challenges of 2021. As always, I can be reached at DeanPisano@eng.ucsd.edu.
~Albert P. Pisano, Dean
UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering