The inaugural MiTek Student Competition at UC San Diego brought 50 graduate students, 12 competing teams, and industry leaders together for a full day of timber structural design presentations and collaboration. Organized through SE 207 Advanced Timber Design and led by Professor Alessandro Palermo, the event drew strong interest from both the engineering community and industry partners. The winning team will go on to represent UC San Diego at MiTek's national competition. The event also gave one graduate student, originally from Myanmar, a chance to reflect on the journey that brought him to UCSD and what he hopes to do with his degree. Read More >>>
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In the summer of 2025, Professor Tara Hutchinson and her team subjected a full-scale 10-story cold-formed steel building to 18 simulated earthquakes — and two live fire tests — on UC San Diego's outdoor shake table, the only facility in the world capable of testing a structure of this height. The goal: to generate the real-world data needed to push U.S. building codes beyond their current six-story cap for cold-formed steel construction. The building held. Read More >>>
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Overheating is one of the biggest unsolved problems in electric aviation — and a UC San Diego research team may have cracked open a new path forward. Their award-winning paper uses topology optimization to automatically design battery packs that balance heat absorption and heat transfer, producing layouts that keep temperatures in check without sacrificing performance. The work, rooted in NASA-supported research on electric aviation, earned the Multidisciplinary Design Optimization Best Paper Award at AIAA SciTech 2026. Read More >>>
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ALERTCalifornia — the statewide wildfire detection program co-led by Professor Falko Kuester — has been featured as one of UC San Diego's high-impact projects. Built on a network of more than 1,200 cameras streaming roughly three gigapixels of image data per second, the program uses AI to surface potential fire detections from thousands of simultaneous feeds and push alerts to CAL FIRE dispatch centers across the state. In its first season, the system detected over 1,200 fires — beating 911 reporting more than 30% of the time. The public-private partnership between UC San Diego, CAL FIRE, and DigitalPath was named one of TIME's Best Inventions of 2023 and received CENIC's 2024 Innovations in Networking Award for Public Safety. Read More >>>
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Professor Mehran Tehrani has been elected to the Fellow grade of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers — the society's highest elected membership distinction, placing him among roughly 3,300 Fellows out of tens of thousands of members worldwide. The recognition reflects nearly two decades of sustained contribution across research, teaching, and service, beginning when he joined ASME as a first-year graduate student in 2008. His work in composites and additive manufacturing has shaped emerging industry practices, while his involvement in ASME has grown from conference attendee to session chair, technical track organizer, and committee contributor. The Fellow grade requires at least ten years of active practice, ten years of ASME membership, and peer nomination — conferred by the Committee of Past Presidents. Read More >>>
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Professor Georgios Tsampras has been elected a Fellow of the Structural Engineering Institute — ASCE's highest membership grade for structural engineers — in recognition of sustained contributions across research, practice, and service. His path to this distinction spans seismic design research at the University of Patras and Lehigh University, structural evaluation of nuclear infrastructure at Simpson Gumpertz and Heger, and damage tolerance analyses for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy at SpaceX, before joining UC San Diego in 2020. There, his research group develops earthquake-resilient building systems through integrated experimental, computational, and advanced manufacturing methods. The SEI Fellow grade requires a professional engineering license, at least ten years of responsible charge, and nomination by an SEI organizational entity — advancement requires unanimous assent of the review committee. Read More >>>
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PhD candidate Ali Zare Hosseinzadeh has been named the Department of Structural Engineering's Outstanding Teaching Assistant — recognized for an approach that goes beyond formulas to build the engineering intuition students carry into their careers. Working with Distinguished Professor Francesco Lanza di Scalea, Ali has contributed to multiple undergraduate and graduate courses, guiding students through the reasoning behind engineering formulations rather than simply presenting results. His sessions emphasize active discussion and direct engagement with structural mechanics, meeting students where they are and bringing them toward deeper understanding. Alongside his teaching, he conducts research in nondestructive evaluation and structural health monitoring — work focused on assessing the health of structures without taking them out of service. Read More >>>
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Charitable donations expands what is possible for our Structural Engineering students, faculty, and staff. By making a gift, you help strengthen SE at UC San Diego. Learn where you can make an impact by clicking below.
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For questions about charitable giving or inquiries for establishing a named fund, please contact Madison Lyle, Associate Director of Development at m1lyle@ucsd.edu or 858-424-1450.
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