|
|
|  NEWS
February 2021
| |
We tackle the hardest problems
| |
At the Jacobs School of Engineering, we tackle the hardest problems that no lab, discipline or industry can solve alone. This is one of the ways we prepare our students and postdocs to become the innovation workforce our nation so desperately needs.
Ten simple rules for women principal investigators during a pandemic and a call to end funding discrimination against Black scientists in the United States are two new examples of our faculty engaging with some of the toughest challenges in the organization and practice of research.
Another example: electrical engineers and computer scientists are collaborating with a National Lab and industry partners to scale up a new, energy-saving photonic network approach for data centers.
While our students, staff and faculty are making incredible advances, I'm working with many people inside and outside the Jacobs School to ensure we have not just more, but the right kinds of research and teaching infrastructure and ecosystems.
In the short video below, I share some additional thoughts on why, and how, we are working so hard to create relevant innovation ecosystems in Franklin Antonio Hall. I am absolutely dedicated to ensuring that our research community is empowered to move fundamental advances through engineering to innovation and out to the marketplace.
I look forward to collaborating with many of you on this and other challenges of 2021. As always, I can be reached at DeanPisano@eng.ucsd.edu.
~Albert ("Al") P. Pisano, Dean
UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering
| |
Franklin Antonio Hall: Industry Partnerships
We are a top 9 engineering school with the creativity and openness necessary to tackle the toughest shared challenges. Academia, industry and government labs working together on future technology is baked into the DNA of the Jacobs School. In Franklin Antonio Hall, we are building on this to create a national model for innovation ecosystems with local roots and national and international reach.
| |
Turning masks into COVID-19 wearable sensors
Nanoengineers at UC San Diego are developing a color-changing test strip that can be stuck on a mask and used to detect SARS-CoV-2 in a person’s breath or saliva. The project, which received $1.3 million from the NIH, is aimed at providing simple, affordable and reliable surveillance for COVID-19 infections that can be done daily and easily implemented in resource-poor settings. “In many ways, masks are the perfect ‘wearable’ sensor for our current world,” said nanoengineering professor Jesse Jokerst. (Read more in the LA Times; and the Jacobs School FAQ.)
| |
Photonics pioneers aim to cut data center energy use
Electrical engineers and computer scientists at UC San Diego are on the front lines of global efforts to reduce the energy used by data centers. The potential impact is great: the US government estimates that data centers currently consume more than 2.5% of U.S. electricity, and that figure is projected to double in about eight years. The team has been awarded a total of $7.5 million from ARPA-E and the California Energy Commission to advance nation-wide efforts to double data center energy efficiency in the next decade through deployment of new photonic—light based—network topologies. It was here at the Jacobs School a decade ago that these same engineers assembled and demonstrated the first data center testbed using an optically switched network.
| |
Engineering leaders call for an end to funding discrimination
Representatives from a network of deans, chairs and distinguished faculty in biomedical engineering have called upon the NIH and other funding agencies to address disparities in allocating funding support to Black researchers. Karen Christman, associate dean at the Jacobs School of Engineering and bioengineering professor, and Padmini Rangamani, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, are coauthors on the call, published in a paper in Cell. According to studies of the allocation of NIH research funding, Black applicant award rates for research funding has stood at about 55 percent of that of white principal investigators of similar academic achievement. The authors make several recommendations for how research funding disparities can be eliminated.
| |
Ten suggestions for female faculty and staff during the pandemicWhen university campuses sent students, staff and faculty members home in March 2020, Padmini Rangamani, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UC San Diego, suddenly found herself running her research lab remotely, teaching her classes online, and supervising her two children, ages 10 and 13, who were also learning online. To deal with the stress the situation created, Rangamani turned to a support network of fellow female faculty members around the United States. The group eventually decided to write a scholarly article with recommendations for other female principal investigators in academia, to normalize conversations about work-life balance and ensure the particilarly vulnerable do not feel forced to exit the academic system.
| |
Bioengineering alum leads company with first at-home COVID test
Jacobs School bioengineering alumnus Erik Engelson is the CEO and President of Lucira Health, which was the first company to receive FDA emergency use authorization for its at-home COVID-19 test kit, in November. The Lucira COVID-19 All-In-One Test Kit is a molecular test that uses a simple nasal swab to return results in 30 minutes, anywhere, any time. Engelson spoke about the process of getting the test through FDA emergency use authorization, his time at UC San Diego, and advice for students, in this Q&A.
| |
Student teams earn Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship
Five teams of Jacobs School of Engineering Ph.D. students were selected to receive the $100,000 Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship—the most ever in a single year. The Fellowship recognizes creative Ph.D. students, providing them with funding, mentoring and other resources to pursue innovative research. This year's recipients are working on projects ranging from fusing data for autonomous driving, building conversational recommender systems, developing efficient power processors, and more.
| |
Did someone forward you this email? Sign up to receive this email in your inbox.
| |
|
|
|
|
