Undergraduate News
2020 News Releases
Windmill kit provides introduction to structures and design
December 10, 2020
This fall, students in the Introduction to Structures and Design course at the Jacobs School of Engineering were able to get hands-on experience designing aerodynamic, efficient and earthquake-safe structures even during a quarter of hybrid in-person and remote learning. Full Story
Introducing the 2020 Jacobs School Racial Equity Fellows
October 13, 2020
Four engineering students with a demonstrated commitment to racial equity have been selected as the inaugural cohort of the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering Racial Equity Fellows. These students, representing undergraduate and graduate perspectives from four different engineering departments, will serve as student advocates on the recently launched Jacobs School Student and Faculty Racial Equity Task Force. Full Story
Celebrating 10 years of IDEA Engineering Student Center success
October 13, 2020
This fall marks the 10th year of the IDEA Engineering Student Center, one of the cornerstones of student life at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. In the past decade, the IDEA—Inclusion, Diversity, Excellence, Achievement—Engineering Student Center has supported thousands of students through to graduation through its various programs, including summer prep and mentorship programs, peer-led engineering learning communities, support for student diversity organizations, and more. Full Story
Broadening horizons in a pandemic
October 12, 2020
More than 1,200 students from around the world were able to gain experience, advice and insight into their field this summer thanks to the expansion of two previously in-person only summer research programs at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. Full Story
Nanoengineering and chemical engineering at UC San Diego in the spotlight
August 10, 2020
A creative group of faculty, students and staff within the University of California San Diego are taking innovative approaches to develop breakthroughs in nanomedicine, flexible electronics, and energy storage. Together, this group makes up the Department of NanoEngineering and the Chemical Engineering Program at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. A virtual issue of the journal ACS Nano highlights the wide ranging research, educational and workforce-development contributions of this extraordinary group. Full Story
Biomedical Engineering Society earns Outstanding Chapter Award
July 31, 2020
UC San Diego's chapter of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) was recognized with the Chapter Outstanding Achievement Award for their 2019-2020 efforts. This is the second time the undergraduate BMES chapter received this prestigious award, after earning the honor in 2017. Full Story
Researchers Discover Two Paths of Aging and New Insights on Promoting Healthspan
July 16, 2020
Molecular biologists and bioengineers at the University of California San Diego have unraveled key mechanisms behind the mysteries of aging. They isolated two distinct paths that cells travel during aging and engineered a new way to genetically program these processes to extend lifespan.The research is described July 17 in the journal Science.Our lifespans as humans are determined by the aging of our individual cells. To understand whether different cells age at the same rate and by the same cause, the researchers studied aging in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a tractable model for investigating mechanisms of aging, including the aging paths of skin and stem cells. Full Story
UC San Diego receives $1.6 million to better prepare young adults for engineering and technical careers
July 2, 2020
Longtime University of California San Diego supporter Buzz Woolley has pledged $1.6 million over the next three years to fund an innovative new initiative that will significantly expand the region’s engineering and technical workforce. Much of the work to create inclusive problem-solving materials for students and teachers will be based in the EnVision Arts and Engineering Maker Studio. Full Story
Women who mean business
July 2, 2020
The University of California San Diego is proud to have been named a top 25 undergraduate university for female-founded startups by Pitchbook, a financial data and software company. Pitchbook tracked companies that raised their first round of funding between January 1, 2006 and August 31, 2019. UC San Diego landed in the No. 22 spot with 45 female founders whose companies raised over $580 million in first-round funding. Full Story
Creating an engineering senior design project...at home
July 2, 2020
Curbside delivery of 3D-printed parts, the cooperation of roommates, weekend build sessions in Riverside and communication, communication, communication. This is what it took for graduating engineering students, staff and faculty at UC San Diego to transition the hands-on, team-based capstone mechanical engineering design course to remote instruction in the age of COVID-19. Full Story
Graduating students honored with engineering Awards of Excellence
June 11, 2020
Six students were selected from among their peers to receive an Award of Excellence for their outstanding academic, leadership and community contributions. Full Story
Class Acts: 2020 Grads Step into the Spotlight
June 4, 2020
They’ve worked hard, made an impact, inspired their communities, and most of all, they’ve demonstrated incredible resilience in challenging times. Help celebrate the class of 2020’s remarkable achievements by reading their stories of hope as these new alumni create better futures for themselves and the world. Full Story
I'm gonna contribute to the revolution of the pharmaceutical world
May 20, 2020
When Qiangzhe “Oliver” Zhang was still a high school student in China applying to colleges in the United States, UC San Diego’s chemical engineering program at Jacobs School of Engineering was at the top of his list. “I knew they had this very new, very innovative nanoengineering program,” he said. “It’s one of a kind, and that got me really excited.” Now, almost eight years later, Zhang is working at the leading edge of biomedical research under Liangfang Zhang in the Nanomaterials and Nanomedicine Laboratory, developing new technologies that could completely change how scientists combat viruses like HIV and SARS-CoV-2 Full Story
Undergraduate engineers design neonatal ECMO simulation
May 11, 2020
In collaboration with physicians and surgeons at Rady Children’s Hospital, a team of undergraduate mechanical engineering students developed a neonatal simulation system for a critical and rare surgical procedure called ECMO. They developed this realistic simulation system- believed to be the first for neonatal patients—for their senior design project. Full Story
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Students harness their knowledge for ventilator challenge
April 28, 2020
Two groups of engineering students at UC San Diego spent their spring break harnessing their knowledge to contribute to the ventilator shortage the world is facing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Full Story
Creating an Early Alert System for COVID-19
April 27, 2020
To better understand early signs of coronavirus and the virus' spread, physicians around the country and data scientists at UC San Diego are working together to use a wearable device to monitor more than 12,000 people, including thousands of healthcare workers. The effort is already underway at hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area and at the University of West Virginia. Full Story
Engineering student leaders honored by Gordon Center
April 20, 2020
The Gordon Engineering Leadership Center at UC San Diego recently announced the 2020 winners of its Engineering Leadership Awards, which recognize undergraduate and graduate engineering students who have demonstrated excellence in leadership, technical ability, communication, and teamwork. Full Story
'Decoy' nanoparticles can block HIV and prevent infection
April 20, 2020
Flipping the standard viral drug targeting approach on its head, engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a promising new “nanosponge” method for preventing HIV from proliferating in the body: coating polymer nanoparticles with the membranes of T helper cells and turning them into decoys to intercept viral particles and block them from binding and infiltrating the body’s actual immune cells. Full Story
Incoming President of Quiz Bowl Club Represents Campus in 'Jeopardy!' College Championship
April 16, 2020
UC San Diego was one of 15 schools represented in the 2020 Jeopardy College Championship, thanks to Alistair Gray, a second year computer science and linguistics double major. Full Story
Undergraduates simplify intubation tool for senior design project
April 16, 2020
A team of UC San Diego undergraduate engineers helped design a simple, all-in-one tool to perform endotracheal intubations, which could simplify the steps clinicians need to take when performing the time-sensitive, complex procedure. The mechanical engineering students took on the challenge as their senior design project, with direction from project sponsor Dr. Taylor Graber of the Department of Anesthesiology at the UC San Diego School of Medicine. Full Story
Economic Impact of COVID-19 will Make the Fight Against Climate Change Harder
April 15, 2020
Measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus have reduced the demand for fuel and slashed oil prices. Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the chief long-term cause of climate warming, have slid perhaps by one-fifth and pollution is down, but can we expect COVID-19 to create lasting change in reversing global warming?“I doubt it,” said David Victor, professor of international relations at the University of California San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy. “While the pandemic might alter societies permanently, the same market forces that drive our dependence on fossil fuels are still in play and may even be reinforced with the economic fallout of COVID-19.” Full Story
Call for Citizen Scientists to Contribute to COVID-19 Studies
April 9, 2020
The Microsetta Initiative, a crowdsourced research effort based at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, has expanded its capabilities to now allow citizen-scientists around the world to help collect crucial information about SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus causing a COVID-19 pandemic.“We are now positioned to collect data that will help drive epidemiological studies of where the virus is and isn’t, and help researchers determine who is at greatest risk, who is already immune, how the virus is transmitted and how it spreads through a population,” said Rob Knight, professor and director of the Center for Microbiome Innovation and co-founder of The Microsetta Initiative, which is run by his research lab at UC San Diego School of Medicine under Scientific Director Daniel McDonald. Full Story
Company founded by engineering alumni advances 1-hour COVID test
April 7, 2020
Medical diagnostic company Fluxergy, founded by UC San Diego engineering alumni, submitted an Emergency Use Authorization to the FDA for their quick, point-of-care COVID-19 test. Full Story
UC San Diego Engineers and Doctors Team Up to Retrofit and Build Ventilators
March 26, 2020
Even as university campuses close across the nation in an effort to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, a team of engineers and physicians at the University of California San Diego is rapidly developing simple, ready-to-use ventilators to be deployed if the need arises.The project kick-started several weeks ago when news started to trickle in that communities in Northern Italy with widespread COVID-19 were in dire straits.“One of the biggest things we heard was that there weren’t enough ventilators to treat all of the patients coming into the hospitals,” said James Friend, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Department of Surgery at UC San Diego. “It’s clear that if we’re not careful, we might end up in the same situation.” Full Story
Undergraduate students bring Intranet to rural Ghanaian school
March 16, 2020
A team of undergraduates, who are part of the Global Ties program at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, developed a self-sustaining and scalable computer server and intranet system. The system will allow teachers at the Semanhyiya American School (SAS) in the rural village of Senase, Ghana, to download Internet pages and educational materials that students can access anytime at school—even when there is no Internet. Full Story
Scientists Design Way to Use Harmless Bacteria to Detect Heavy Metals in Drinking Water
February 27, 2020
A team from UC San Diego and the San Diego startup Quantitative BioSciences has a new approach to continuous monitoring of heavy metal contamination in drinking water using bacteria as sensors of contamination. The team recently published their advances in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). Full Story
Barrett Romasko: structural engineer
February 25, 2020
Barrett Romasko’s path in college has been full of exploration. Romasko, a senior majoring in structural engineering with a focus on aerospace structures, applied to UC San Diego without knowing much about the different applications of structural engineering. His willingness to seek out new opportunities — through on-campus activities, classes, and internships — has been a contributing factor in helping him figure out his interests and goals for the future. Full Story
Electrical engineering student wins prestigious aerospace defense award
February 19, 2020
Tanish Jain, an electrical engineering undergraduate student at UC San Diego, earned second place in the USAIRE Student Award competition for a 10-page paper on the aerospace defense capabilities and strategies of Israel and India, two burgeoning powers in an increasingly multipolar world. Full Story
Structural engineering students showcase construction engineering skills
February 12, 2020
Structural engineering undergraduate students put their construction engineering skills to the test at the Associated Schools of Construction Region 6 and 7 competition in Reno, Nevada from February 5-8. Full Story
Lim(b)itless in India: UC San Diego Students Travel Abroad to Empower Amputees
February 6, 2020
In November, 2019, 10 UC San Diego students filed into a bustling amputee clinic in Jaipur, India. On one side of the room, men and women, some bearing crutches, watched as their new limbs took shape under the staff’s careful hands. For many of them, a prosthetic limb represented the chance to regain their mobility, independence and livelihoods. The students’ visit to the Jaipur Foot clinic—a non-profit known around the world for providing affordable, prosthetic limbs and other mobility aids to those in need—marked more than a year of painstaking work to develop technology connecting amputees directly to prosthetists. The work is part of Project Lim(b)itless, an initiative founded by Albert Lin, a recent amputee and researcher at the Qualcomm Institute (QI) at UC San Diego. Full Story
UC San Diego startup selected as finalist in UC Pitch contest
January 30, 2020
A startup founded by a UC San Diego electrical and computer engineering graduate student is one of five finalists in the 2020 UC Pitch Startup Showcase held Jan. 29 and 30 in tandem with the Global Corporate Venturing and Innovation Summit in Monterey, Calif. Full Story
Land, Sea & Air
January 29, 2020
Student engineering clubs push the limits of Tritons and their vehicles—here’s the fastest, deepest and highest-flying out there. Full Story
Mechanical engineering student awarded Brooke Owens Fellowship
January 24, 2020
Surya Vohra, a mechanical engineering student at UC San Diego, has been selected as a 2020 Brooke Owens Fellow. The Fellowship is awarded to exceptional undergraduate women in aerospace. This marks the fourth year—since the beginning of the Brooke Owens Fellow program—that a UC San Diego engineering student has been awarded a fellowship. Full Story
oSTEM earns Chapter of the Year award
January 6, 2020
Just three years after it was founded, UC San Diego’s chapter of oSTEM — Out in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics — was awarded the Chapter of the Year designation at the oSTEM Annual Conference in Detroit. Full Story