Undergraduate News

New course expands sustainable practices to all engineering disciplines

December 14, 2022

A group of 20 students from the Jacobs School of Engineering spent the fall quarter learning how to apply sustainable design practices to any field of engineering. In the inaugural Sustainable Engineering and Design course, students learned about life cycle assessment, the environmental impact of different materials and energy sources, and various design practices to improve the sustainable performance of products and processes. Full Story

UC San Diego Celebrates its Inaugural Cohort of College Corps Fellows

October 26, 2022

UC San Diego students joined more than 3,200 undergraduates this month for a statewide launch and swearing-in ceremony in celebration of the first #CaliforniansForAll College Corps Fellows. Led by California Volunteers and the California Office of the Governor, College Corps is a statewide paid service program that engages students in community-serving opportunities, while also receiving financial compensation and other benefits.   Full Story

UC San Diego's Chapter of the Biomedical Engineering Society earns Outstanding Achievement Award

October 5, 2022

UC San Diego’s chapter of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) was recognized with the Chapter Outstanding Achievement Award for their work in the 2021-2022 school year. This is the third time the undergraduate BMES chapter received this prestigious award in the last five years, after earning the honor in 2017 and 2020.   Full Story

Franklin Antonio Hall opens its doors

September 29, 2022

The UC San Diego campus community turned out in big numbers last Friday to celebrate the opening of the sleek and soaring Franklin Antonio Hall. The 186,000 square foot building is not only innovative in its architecture, it’s also ground-breaking in how research teams are organized within the building. Full Story

Six undergraduate engineering programs earn top-10 rank

September 14, 2022

Six undergraduate academic programs at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering ranked in the top 10 programs in the nation according to the U.S. News & World Report 2022-2023 Best Colleges ranking. Full Story

$5M from NSF to Empower Transfer Students to Earn Engineering Degrees

September 8, 2022

With a $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation, UC San Diego is leading a new effort to support low-income transfer students pursuing a bachelor’s degree in engineering. The five-year program, called EMPOWER, will support engineering students at UC San Diego and two nearby community colleges, Southwestern College in Chula Vista, Calif., and Imperial Valley College in Imperial, Calif., working to eliminate opportunity gaps through comprehensive cohort-based, success-promoting programming and significant scholarships. Full Story

Math-computer science student named to Hacking Top 50 list

September 1, 2022

UC San Diego math-computer science student Faris Ashai was recently featured in 2022’s Major League Hacking (MLH) Top 50, a list recognizing the top new computer scientists and hackers.  Full Story

Binational program provides students with impactful research opportunities

August 25, 2022

As part of the ENLACE binational research program, 185 students from Mexico and the United States spent the summer getting hands-on experience in science and engineering labs on campus.  Full Story

UC San Diego Students Win National Entrepreneurship Challenge in Nanotechnology

July 27, 2022

Two student teams at UC San Diego—led by master’s student Amer Yaghi and by senior undergraduate Lauren Takiguchi, both of the Jacobs School of Engineering—recently placed first and second in the Nanotechnology Entrepreneurship Challenge (NTEC), an annual contest that teaches budding entrepreneurs the ins and outs of founding a nanotechnology startup.  Full Story

Binational research program kicks off with largest cohort yet

July 15, 2022

This summer, 185 high school and college students from the United States and Mexico will be collaborating on real-world scientific research projects in labs at UC San Diego, as they participate in the 9th annual ENLACE binational summer research program. Full Story

UC San Diego Students to Compete in Sustainability Decathlon

July 7, 2022

With the affordable housing crisis reaching a fever pitch in San Diego and the impacts of climate change being felt around the world, a team of students at UC San Diego is putting their skills to work as they design a sustainable AND affordable house for the Orange County Sustainability Decathlon. Full Story

From Sea to Sky, Students Develop Tools for Improved Environmental Monitoring

June 30, 2022

Undergraduate mechanical engineering students at UC San Diego developed tools to improve our ability to source environmental data from hard to access places, like deep in the ocean, or high in the sky. For their Jacobs School of Engineering capstone senior design projects, two teams took on the challenges of designing a drone system to capture air samples around the world, and a deep-sea data buoy system to collect underwater environmental data, respectively. Full Story

Students earn top marks in Mars rover competition

June 22, 2022

The UC San Diego Yonder Dynamics student team made a triumphant return to the first in-person University Rover Challenge since 2019, claiming 1st place in the science portion of the Mars rover robotics competition, and 8th place overall out of 26 teams from around the world.   Full Story

Class of 2022 honored with Awards of Excellence

June 7, 2022

The Jacobs School of Engineering will honor the undergraduate class of 2022 at its annual Ring Ceremony on Saturday, June 11, after the campus convocation. Six students who have made significant contributions to their department and the Jacobs School community will be honored with Awards of Excellence. Full Story

UC San Diego students win 2nd place in nation-wide autonomous, electric go-kart race

June 6, 2022

A team of engineering and data science students from UC San Diego came in 2nd place at the  second annual autonomous, electric (EV) GrandPrix go-kart race hosted at Purdue University in May. Chaztine Embucado, an electrical engineering student at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, was part of this year’s team. She shares how she got involved, and what the experience was like, in this Q&A. Full Story

Concrete Canoes, Steel Bridges test students' structural engineering savvy

April 7, 2022

For the first time in 15 years, UC San Diego structural engineering students hosted the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Pacific Southwest Symposium from March 31-April 2, drawing 850 students from 14 universities in Southern California and Hawaii to campus for civil and structural engineering challenges including the Concrete Canoe and Steel Bridge competitions. In addition to hosting the regional conference, the UC San Diego Steel Bridge team won first place, clenching a spot at the national competition in May. Full Story

Computer Science and Engineering Researchers Assemble the First Complete Human Genome

March 31, 2022

Two decades after the Human Genome Project produced a draft sequence, an international research team, including University of California San Diego computer scientists, has published the first complete genome. The work was done by the Telomere to Telomere (T2T) consortium, and six papers describing the project will be published April 1 in a special issue of the journal Science. Full Story

Lighter, stiffer, faster, stronger

March 21, 2022

On April 2, student teams from Southern California and Hawaii will gather on the UC San Diego campus to put together the strongest, lightest bridge made of steel in the shortest amount of time. The Steel Bridge competition is a highlight of the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Pacific Southwest Symposium, being hosted by UC San Diego for the first time in 15 years.    Full Story

'Project in a Box' helping kids find their passion at San Diego Library

March 1, 2022

Electrical engineering students in the Project-in-a-Box student organization teamed up with the San Diego Public Library to bring hands-on projects to elementary school students in San Diego. Full Story

Engineering students to compete in international maritime robot competition

February 17, 2022

Engineering students are preparing to compete in the Maritime RobotX Challenge in Australia in November 2022. In order to get there, they’ll have to turn the vessel into a completely autonomous system, capable of navigating to specific buoys, launching objects at a target, and working with a drone to map out the sea space, entirely on its own. Full Story

Introducing the second cohort of Racial Equity Fellows

January 10, 2022

Seven UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering students have been selected to serve as Racial Equity Fellows. In this role, they will act as student advocates on the Jacobs School Student and Faculty Racial Equity Task Force, each bringing their demonstrated interest in diversity, equity and inclusion to the Task Force. Full Story

UH, UC San Diego students to compete in driverless car racing event at Consumer Electronics Show

January 5, 2022

UC San Diego and the University of Hawaii teamed up to make history once again, competing in the world’s first ever head-to-head autonomous car racing competition. The AI Racing Tech team, which comprises students and faculty from UH and UC San Diego, heads to Las Vegas for the Autonomous Challenge @ CES (Consumer Electronics Show) on January 7.  Full Story