Undergraduate News
2015 News Releases
UC San Diego Electrical Engineering Department Celebrates 50 Years of Innovation
December 8, 2015
The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of California, San Diego celebrated its 50th Anniversary on Friday, November 13. To commemorate the celebration, the ECE department hosted a booth during the UC San Diego Founders Day Festival and held the ECE 50th Anniversary Founders Day Event in the evening in Jacobs Hall. The evening event included a reception, student posters, the unveiling of the Electrical and Computer Engineering historical timeline, and talks by faculty, alumni and other special guests. Full Story
Learning how to program boats for autonomous movement
December 7, 2015
Small toy-sized boats were zooming around Canyonview Pool here on campus On a recent Thursday afternoon. The boats accelerated and took tight turns around each other, then slowed to an almost-crawl and traced precise patterns in the pool. It was all part of the MAE 198 class led by Teaching Professor Mark Anderson. Students learn how to program modified off-the-shelf boats to autonomously follow a route. Full Story
Professional Evening with Industry sets attendance records
December 4, 2015
The 7th annual Professional Evening with Industry was the largest one yet, with a record 21 sponsoring companies and more than 800 registered students. The event, which featured a yearly career fair and professional mixer to bridge the gap between students and industry, took place Nov. 2. Full Story
Shu Chien among UC San Diego Professors Named AAAS Fellows
November 23, 2015
Bioengineering professor Shu Chien is among six University of California, San Diego professors named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society. They are among 347 members selected this year by colleagues in their disciplines to be honored for scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. Shu Chien, MD, PhD, is a professor of medicine and bioengineering and director of the Institute of Engineering in Medicine at UC San Diego. He was cited for “continuing outstanding contributions to vascular physiology and vascular cell and molecular biology, which have greatly increased our understanding of vascular pathologies including atherosclerosis.” His work, which focuses on the study of how blood flow and pressure affect vessels, earned him a National Medal of Science in 2011. He is one of only 11 scholars in the United States to be a member of all three national academies: Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Full Story
Expansion of Computer Science and Engineering Building breaks ground
November 3, 2015
The Department of Computer Science and Engineering marked a significant step in its history Friday, Oct. 9, with a groundbreaking for a 7,000-square-foot remodeling and expansion of the EBU II building. The project will include a Design Innovation Center, spaces for faculty and students to interact and more computer lab space. Full Story
Round-the-Clock Hackathon Helps Coders Make Connections, Develop 'Crazy Ideas'
October 15, 2015
More than 1,000 computer science students gathered in a massive air-conditioned tent at UC San Diego’s Triton Track and Field Stadium Oct. 2-4 for the first-ever SD Hacks competition. The 36-hour round-the-clock hackathon challenged student teams to generate innovative working projects or “hacks” that rely on software, biotechnology, virtual reality, and more. Full Story
Meet the Jacobs School's 17 new faculty
October 14, 2015
The Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego is building and strengthening its research abilities by hiring 17 new faculty this year. With these hires, the school is increasing its impact in clinical medicine, robotics, wireless technologies, genomics, data sciences and cybersecurity, clean energy, advanced manufacturing—and more. Full Story
Major hacking event to welcome more than 1,500 programmers to San Diego
September 29, 2015
More than 1,500 computer science students andprogrammers will converge in San Diego to take part in one of the largest student-run hackathon movements to sweep the nation. Full Story
Learning Company Co-Founded by UC San Diego Researcher Secures $10 Million
September 21, 2015
Planet3, an exploration-based learning company, has announced it has secured $10 million in funding to launch a digital learning platform that presents the entire Earth as a living laboratory. The company was co-founded by the University of California, San Diego’s Albert Yu-Min Lin, with former National Geographic president Tim Kelly and award winning game designer Vijay Lakshman. Empowering student curiosity and achievement, Planet3 targets Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) subjects. The company’s first product focuses on middle school Earth, Life, and Physical Sciences, with an initial release scheduled for Fall 2016. Full Story
NSF Locates National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure Site at UC San Diego
September 17, 2015
The University of California, San Diego has been named one the first university sites in the new NSF National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI). The agency will fund UC San Diego $1.1 million annually over five years to advance nanoscale science and engineering and develop transformative nanotechnologies and nanotechnology-based startups. Full Story
UC San Diego Develops Online Software Development Courses for Coursera
September 1, 2015
Three members of the Computer Science and Engineering faculty at the University of California, San Diego are the brains behind a new online course series to teach intermediate software development to learners around the world, Java Programming: Object-Oriented Design of Data Structures. The four courses and a Capstone Project make up a Specialization mini-degree program commissioned by Coursera, a leading provider of open online courses with 15 million registered learners worldwide. Full Story
Undergraduates find a future in robotics lab over summer
September 1, 2015
Gerardo Gonzalez had never seriously considered going to graduate school before his summer internship in mechanical and aerospace engineering professors Jorge Cortes’ and Sonia Martinez's Multi-Robot (MURO) lab. “The sense of satisfaction I had after we got our robot to work helped change my perspective and gain an understanding of control theory,” said Gonzalez. “At one point, the formula that enabled our success was someone's research; now, it is being used all over the world! To answer questions that will have an impact in the real world – that is what motivates me to go to graduate school. The summer research program has helped me see that.” Full Story
Bone-fracture puzzles introduce undergraduates to real-world engineering
August 26, 2015
In a new project-based class, first-year bioengineering students at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering produced 3D-printed models of fractured ankles from 2D images of real patients. Full Story
Howard University Alumnus Awarded Sloan Ph.D. Fellowship in Computer Science at UC San Diego
August 25, 2015
Jeremy Blackstone is the first graduate student selected to receive a fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Minority Ph.D. Program to do a doctorate in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. He graduated magna cum laude in computer science from Howard University, where he also earned his M.S. degree, but Blackstone is not a newcomer to the UC San Diego campus. For the past two summers, he worked in the lab of CSE Professor Ryan Kastner in an eight-week program for Master’s and undergraduate students. Full Story
UC San Diego is No. 1 in Nation for Sixth Year, According to Washington Monthly
August 24, 2015
For the sixth consecutive year, the University of California, San Diego has been ranked the number one university in the nation by Washington Monthly for its contributions to the public good. The magazine released its 2015 College Guide today, an annual issue that takes a different approach to ranking the nation’s colleges and universities. Full Story
IEEE Online Magazine for Teens Features UC San Diego Professor and Smart Vehicles
August 24, 2015
The online publication of IEEE intended to inspire students ages 14 through 18 to learn more about engineering, technology and computing has placed its current focus on the field of “intelligent vehicles”, and to highlight careers in the field, IEEE Spark put the spotlight on UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering electrical and computer engineering distinguished professor Mohan Trivedi. Trivedi is also the past leader of Calit2’s Intelligent Transportation and Telematics research at UC San Diego. Full Story
3D Printing Debuts at Robot Competition for Mechanical Engineering Undergraduates
August 20, 2015
In the Spring of 2015, the students in Introduction to Engineering Graphics and Design (MAE3), taught by mechanical and aerospace engineering professors Nate Delson and Mike Tolley, were tasked with designing a robot that can “recycle” – or rather, move items from a small staging area representing their dorm room into the correct recycling bin a few feet away. Full Story
UC San Diego Tech Accelerator Dedicated to Supporting Female Technology Entrepreneurs Wins Award from U.S. Small Business Administration
August 11, 2015
The mystartupXX accelerator program at the University of California, San Diego is aimed at empowering the next generation of women technology entrepreneurs. For the second year in a row, mystartupXX has been named a winner of the national Growth Accelerator Fund competition, which comes with a $50,000 award from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). Full Story
Qualcomm Institute Hosts North American School of Information Theory
August 6, 2015
For the first time, the North American School of Information Theory (NASIT) will be held at UC San Diego, with more than 100 graduate students, postdoctoral students and leading researchers expected to convene for four days of lectures, discussions, tutorials and networking events. The eighth annual NASIT is sponsored in part by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Information Theory Society, and will be held from Aug. 10-13 at the Qualcomm Institute’s (QI) headquarters in Atkinson Hall. Full Story
Campus supports computer science initiative to serve students interested in computational sciences
July 24, 2015
In an era of limits on the number of freshmen and transfer students accepted into computer science and engineering majors, the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego has embarked on what it calls a “targeted effort to build and disseminate resources for students interested in studying the computational sciences at UC San Diego.” The project recently received a $75,000 grant following a highly competitive round of proposals submitted to the university's Academic Advising Innovation Grant Initiative. Full Story
Student Leaders Recognized at Annual Ring Ceremony
July 1, 2015
The UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering held its 9th annual Ring Ceremony on Saturday, June 13. Out of 700+ graduating engineers from across six departments, nearly 450 of them participated in the ceremony. Among them were a number of outstanding student leaders who were recognized by their department for Excellence in Leadership and Service. Full Story
UC San Diego Offers Online Courses for Students Specializing in Interaction Design
June 26, 2015
Learners around the world, regardless of background, will have the opportunity online to learn how to design great user experiences and what it takes to design technologies that “bring people joy rather than frustration.” The courses were developed by University of California, San Diego Professor Scott Klemmer, who will begin teaching the sequence of seven online courses on “Interaction Design” on the Coursera platform on June 24. Full Story
University Students Turn Satellite Images into Policy Analysis
June 16, 2015
Recently, over 50 students – most of them graduate students – showed up for the day-long Big Pixel Hackathon to Discover the Planet in Atkinson Hall’s Calit2 Theater. The May 23 hackathon was organized by the Big Pixel Initiative (BPI) to showcase what can happen when you let students loose on the largest private collection of high-resolution satellite imagery on earth. Co-directors Gordon Hanson, a professor in the School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS), and Qualcomm Institute research scientist Albert Yu-Min Lin oversaw the event, with hands-on management by lead coordinator Jessica Block and postdoctoral researcher (and GIS expert) Ran Goldblatt, both based in the Qualcomm Institute. Full Story
UC San Diego Launches edX Channel; Computer Graphics Course Announced
June 16, 2015
The recently-launched CSE-based Center for Visual Computing, or VisComp, at UC San Diego, confirmed that its first course on the edX learning platform will be taught by the center’s director, computer science professor Ravi Ramamoorthi. Full Story
UC San Diego Students Aim to Break World Record for Longest Flight of 3D-Printed Rocket Engine
June 11, 2015
On a hot, dusty Friday evening in May, a caravan of five cars packed with UC San Diego students rolled onto FAR site in the Mojave Desert – a 10-acre property established by the Friends of Amateur Rocketry, Inc. to safely test and launch rockets. It took three tries, but the UC San Diego chapter of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space were able to successfully test the latest version of their 3D-printed rocket engine. Full Story
Paul Kube is honored as computer science educator
June 10, 2015
Endowed chair created in Kube’s name at UC San DiegoKube is now being recognized and honored for his contributions to the lives of individual students at UC San Diego and for his vision for furthering the frontiers of computer science through education. Thanks to a generous gift from UC San Diego computer science alumnus Taner Halicioglu, the university was able to create a new endowed chair for a teaching professor. It’s the first of its kind at UC San Diego, and named after Kube. Creating the Paul R. Kube Chair of Computer Science is part of a $2 million dollar gift from this UC San Diego alumnus who is passionate about undergraduate computer science education at the Jacobs School of Engineering. Read more about the generous gift here. Full Story
IDEA Scholars Program Boosts Retention Rates of Underrepresented Engineering Students
June 10, 2015
When all 16 students graduate by summer 2016, the IDEA Scholars program will have retained all but six of the 22 students it started out with—much higher than the 54 percent retention rate for students with similar demographics who were not part of the program. Two students in the program dropped out of engineering, but they remained in a STEM major. The other four have switched to different campuses to be closer to home, but are still studying and graduating with an engineering degree. Full Story
$2 million gift from alumnus supports computer science undergraduate engineering education at UC San Diego
June 9, 2015
A $2 million gift from a University of California, San Diego alumnus will provide critical support for undergraduate education in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. The funds will help recruit, retain and support the professors and lecturers whose primary mission is to teach and mentor students. Full Story
UC San Diego Center for Networked Systems Launches LGBT Scholarship
June 2, 2015
To encourage a more diverse community in computer science education and research, the Center for Networked Systems (CNS) at the University of California, San Diego is establishing the Alan Turing Memorial Scholarship in partnership with private donors. Full Story
5G Wireless Forum: The Promise and the Peril of Future Wireless Systems
May 29, 2015
The format for the recent 5G Forum on Next-Generation Wireless Systems and Applications, held at the University of California, San Diego, was a reflection of the two poles — the promise and the peril — that define the future of wireless technology.If all goes according to plan, the next decade of advances in mobile technology promises to transform a vast array of sectors, from government to transportation to public health. It will be possible, for example, to use an array of devices to wirelessly monitor your body for any sign of illness, hold a preliminary e-consultation with your physician should a question arise and then also predict whether or not traffic flow will make you late to your follow-up doctor’s appointment. Full Story
Power to the Batteries
May 21, 2015
Better solar panels and wind turbines are important to helping ensure a low-carbon future. But they are not enough. The energy from these intermittent sources must be stored, managed, converted and accessed when it’s needed most. And the cost of the battery systems that do this work needs to drop.This is where the new Sustainable Power and Energy Center at UC San Diego comes in. NanoEngineering professor Shirley Meng is the inaugural director of the center. Full Story
Alumnus Reaches for the Stars
May 21, 2015
Robert Kolozs, a Jacobs School alumnus, is president of San Diego Composites Inc., a company he cofounded in 2004. The company built and tested more than 1,000 parts for NASA’s Orion spacecraft, a vehicle designed to carry astronauts to destinations in deep space, including an asteroid and Mars. On Dec. 5, Orion launched atop a Delta IV rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Space Launch Complex for a two-orbit, four-hour test flight. San Diego Composites manufactured everything from the vehicle’s windows to light composite elements connecting the spacecraft’s inner and outer shells. The company also built a key component of the system that would allow Orion’s crew to eject in an emergency. Full Story
Event empowers students to study STEM fields
May 14, 2015
As a ninth grader, Diana has dreamt of being many different things, but an engineer has never been one of them.“I guess it just isn’t something you think could really happen for a lot of people. Those kinds of jobs feel so far away,” she said.She was among 150 students who attended the Empower High School Conference on Saturday, April 25—an event that hopes to make STEM jobs a more realistic career goal for students.By the end of the event, she was enthusiastic: “My favorite part of the day was touring the labs. Seeing all the resources here is definitely inspiring. It makes you feel like you could something really cool,” said Diana. Full Story
UC San Diego bioengineering student and Jacobs Scholar receives Goldwater Scholarship
May 12, 2015
Zou was awarded the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship this year, created in 1986 in honor of Senator Barry Goldwater to provide highly qualified scientists, mathematicians and engineers who intend to pursue research with scholarship money. Full Story
UC San Diego Alum Finds Dream Job, Engineering Students Learn How to Discover Theirs
May 1, 2015
“Every week, I get to teach kids how to build stuff that I think is really cool, and then watch what they create from it,” said Naderi. “I have my dream job.” The path to her dream job wasn’t a straight one, and Naderi recently returned to the Jacobs School of Engineering to impart her wisdom to undergraduate engineering students. Full Story
Lighting a Spark for Computer Programming
April 30, 2015
Second- to fifth-grade students at Adams Elementary School in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego are learning how to program while playing a simulated version of Minecraft, a popular computer game. The programming classes are made possible by a partnership between the San Diego Rotary Club, San Diego schools and ThoughtSTEM, a company co-founded by three Ph.D. students at UC San Diego. In addition to Adams, two other elementary schools and two middle schools in City Heights are taking part in the program. Full Story
Jacobs School of Engineering Students Receive 2015 NSF Graduate Research Fellowships
April 24, 2015
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded Graduate Research Fellowships to eight students from the Jacobs School of Engineering. This year, the NSF received approximately 16,500 applications and made 2,000 fellowship award offers. The fellowships provide three years of financial support – including an annual stipend and a cost-of-education allowance to the graduate institution – during a five-year period to individuals pursuing research-based master’s or doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics. Full Story
Alumna, Incoming Student Share Passion for Computer Science and Basketball
April 17, 2015
There must be something about hoops, Tritons and computer science. Meet Marissa Hing. The 18-year-old high school senior was on campus April 4 to attend Triton Day, when more than 15,000 accepted students and their families converged on UC San Diego to get a taste of everything the university offers its students-to-be. Despite her 5-foot-1-inch height, Hing is also coming to play basketball on an athletic scholarship for the campus NCAA Division II team, after starring since her freshman year at Pinewood High School in Los Altos, Calif. Full Story
Building a Race Car: UC San Diego Student Engineers in Action
April 13, 2015
Triton Racing is UC San Diego’s Formula SAE team, and it continues to produce cutting-edge race cars for the annual Formula SAE competition, held this year at Lincoln Airpark in Lincoln, Nebraska June 17 to 20, 2015. Full Story
CSE Alumni Brief Students on Profits, Perils in Tech Startups
April 8, 2015
Lindsey Fowler (BS ’05), president of the CSE Alumni Advisory Board, moderated an April 2 panel of six alumni experts and Jay Kunin, executive director of the Moxie Center for Student Entrepreneurship at UC San Diego. The alumni included Taner Halicioglu (BS ’96), Jennifer Arguello (BS ’00), Chris Schulte (MS ’05), Aaron Liao (BS ’05), Erik Buchanan (BS ‘07), and Justin Allen (BS ’10), several of whom also sit on the alumni board.Justin Allen worked for Teradata after graduation, then joined a Bay Area startup called WebAction in 2014. He now works remotely from San Diego on purpose-built analytics applications in the growing real-time data streaming space. “I’m still a field engineer but I’m working on analytics applications and I get to live in San Diego while working for a startup,” said Allen. “It’s the best of both worlds.” Full Story
SISTERS in Science
April 2, 2015
How do you build the perfect water filter: with cotton balls or coffee filters? Or maybe sand? And how about decorations: feathers or duct tape? These were some of the questions groups of girls energetically debated on a recent Thursday afternoon at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School in Encinitas. It was all part of a girls-only after school program led by undergraduate students at UC San Diego, and funded by a three-year $800,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Full Story
Qualcomm Institute Launches Industry Innovation Space on UC San Diego Campus
March 30, 2015
Working closely with other campus entities to translate ideas from the lab into products and companies in the marketplace, the Qualcomm Institute has launched an Innovation Space where qualified faculty startups, industry partners or national laboratories can lease office or lab space inside the research institute’s headquarters building on the University of California, San Diego campus. Full Story
Help San Diego engineers drive cross country in an electric car in just 45 hours
March 17, 2015
San Diego engineers want to drive an electric car from coast to coast in just 45 hours and they need your help. The trip will be made possible by a new technology developed by researchers at the University of California, San Diego: a battery management system that will allow them to swap out and recharge the smaller modules that make up an electric vehicle’s battery. This is easier than swapping out the whole battery, which is cumbersome and requires large, heavy equipment. Full Story
More than 2,000 attend student-organized career fair
March 4, 2015
There might not be such a thing as a standing-room only job fair, but the Disciplines of Engineering Career Fair that took place on campus Feb. 20 came close. More than 2,000 students crowded the Price Center ballrooms and patiently waited in lines that were several people deep to talk to recruiters from more than 90 companies, including Apple, Facebook, Yahoo! and Google. Full Story
Engineering SISTERS
February 20, 2015
How do you build the perfect water filter? With cotton balls or coffee filters? How about sand? And how about decorations: feathers or duct tape? These were the questions groups of girls energetically debated on a warm Thursday afternoon in December at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School in Encinitas. It was all part of a girls-only after school program led by undergraduate students at the University of California, San Diego, and funded by a three-year $800,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. The project is called SISTERS, short for Sustaining Interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Research in Society, and it reaches more than 130 girls in 5th- and 6th grade at four Encinitas elementary schools, with anywhere from 20 to 40 percent of the students live below the poverty line. “We want this program to make a profound and lasting difference in these girls’ lives,” said Mandy Bratton, SISTERS’ principal investigator. “We hope the engaging curriculum and the interaction with female scientists, engineers and undergraduates will ignite their interest in careers in science and engineering in which women continue to be underrepresented.” Full Story
Students help Boy Scouts earn STEM merit badges
February 9, 2015
They learned about building circuits with blinking LED lights. They learned several (programming) languages. They also earned badges. Dozen of eager Boy Scouts turned out at this year’s IEEE STEM Merit Badge Fair Saturday Jan. 31 on the UC San Diego campus to add some technical skills to their resume—and a few badges to their sash. Full Story
Two UC San Diego Scientists Receive Stem Cell Technology Grants
February 3, 2015
The governing board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has awarded two University of California, San Diego researchers almost $3 million in combined funding to pursue new technologies intended to accelerate advances moving stem cell therapies out of the lab and into the clinic. Full Story
Frontiers of Innovation Program Seeds Seven Multidisciplinary Projects on Campus
January 29, 2015
The “Frontiers of Innovation” program is a campus-wide effort to support the primary research initiatives of the UC San Diego Strategic Plan.One component provides fellowships for undergraduate and graduate students as well as postdoctoral scholars. The other component provides funding to support teams of UC San Diego scholars from across campus in their efforts to launch large-scale, multidisciplinary research-center applications. Full Story
Improving Signal Amplification in Semiconductors and Other Optoelectronic Devices
January 27, 2015
According to the American Institute of Physics (AIP), a new signal amplification process developed by researchers at the University of California, San Diego is “now poised to fuel new generations of electrical and photonic devices – transforming communications, imaging, and computing.” The researchers in UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering, led by electrical and computer engineering professor Yuhwa Lo, have discovered a mechanism to amplify signals in optoelectronic systems that is far more efficient than the process long used by the semiconductor industry based on impact ionization. Full Story
Robot solves Rubik's Cube, teaches kids about STEM
January 5, 2015
Their robot won’t break the world record for solving Rubik’s Cube, but Daryl Stimm and William Mutterspaugh have an even more ambitious goal: using it to get thousands of girls and boys interested in science and technology. The two recent graduates from the University of California, San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering are already building Ruku Robot, a kit that students in middle school or high school can assemble to get hands-on experience with the fundamentals of robotics, computer science and engineering. Full Story