|
| NEWS December 2020
| |
A stronger, ever more relevant Jacobs School
| |
As we fight hard to weather the pandemic, we continue to build momentum. This momentum is necessary, but not sufficient. The real question is: How will the Jacobs School of Engineering emerge on the other side of the pandemic? The ground has shifted in many ways, and it's up to us to respond, evolve and adapt.
As we build momentum (details at the end my note), there are two high-level moves we are also making. These moves are designed to ensure the Jacobs School emerges more ready than ever to confront the challenges, injustices, and societal and innovation needs laid bare in 2020.
First, we have initiated and strengthened a series of culture-building programs. The goal is to ensure that we empower all of our students, faculty and staff to do the creative and innovative technical work they are so capable of. (I list out some of these programs below.)
Second, we are facilitating critical national and international conversations on research. In particular, how academia, industry and government can partner and collaborate in new ways. The goal is to build on the existing research enterprise in order to increase the pull through of innovation to society. We will do this by training an ever more diverse and empowered innovation workforce. I've mentioned this work before, and I will keep returning to it in 2021.
We are able to engage in this future-focused work in these difficult times thanks to the hard work of so many people here at UC San Diego. I am proud and thankful to be a fully integrated partner in the campus-wide Return to Learn Program, which is an effort to protect the health and safety of students, staff and faculty while maintaining momentum.
Framed by our work on culture building and more effective research partnerships, I'm pleased and humbled to share some of the momentum we've built this year and over the last handful of years. I offer my deepest gratitude to everyone in our Jacobs School community.
World-class faculty
We have hired more than 130 new faculty into the Jacobs School over the last 7 years. More than 36% of these new professors are women and/or from other groups traditionally underrepresented in engineering and computer science.
Growing research enterprise
At $212M, our research expenditures are up 34% over the last 5 years.
Rising reputation
We jumped to #9 in the nation this year, in the closely watched US News and World Report Best Engineering Schools rankings. This is up from #17 just four years ago.
Innovation workforce
We have awarded nearly 15,000 Jacobs School degrees over the last 6 years. More than 9,170 talented students enrolled in Fall 2020.
Research relevance
We have launched 14 new agile research centers and institutes since 2014 to drive deeper and more relevant collaborations that tackle the fundamental challenges no research lab or company can solve alone.
Franklin Antonio Hall
We are on schedule for our Spring 2022 opening of Franklin Antonio Hall. Our new building will serve as a model for how to build innovation ecosystems with physical roots and virtual infrastructure with national and international impact. This is how engineering for the public good will get done in the future.
Culture building
As I mentioned above, we are working hard to build a school culture where every student, staff member and professor is empowered to bring their whole self to the classroom, lab, office, and screen. Just this year, we launched the Student and Faculty Racial Equity Task Force; the Racial Equity Fellows Program; the Jacobs School Research Ethics Initiative; and the Jacobs School Anthropology, Performance, and Technology Program. The Jacobs School is a key part of the new Changemaker Institute at UC San Diego. We are also celebrating 10 years of the IDEA Engineering Student Center; and we are proud to be collaborating with our UC San Diego Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.
I am grateful to everyone helping to achieve these accomplishments and the many others I don't have room to mention here. A few of our Jacobs School wins are captured in this video.
I wish you peace and rest over the holidays. I look forward to joining you in 2021 to tackle the next set of challenges. As always, I can be reached at DeanPisano@eng.ucsd.edu.
~Albert P. Pisano, Dean
UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering
| |
25 years of wireless research leadershipThe UC San Diego Center for Wireless Communications (CWC) is celebrating 25 years of partnering with industry to push the bounds of wireless technologies while training the wireless workforce of the future. At the Center's 5G and Beyond Forum, researchers from academia, industry and government presented on both 5G innovations and visions for 6G. Looking forward, UC San Diego is engaging in national and international conversations focused on creating wireless research ecosystems and infrastructure through public-private partnerships that facilitate both innovation and workforce development.
| |
10 faculty named in 2020 list of Highly Cited Researchers
Ten professors at the Jacobs School of Engineering are among the world’s most influential researchers in their fields, according to a new research citation report from the Web of Science Group. They earned inclusion in the list of Highly Cited Researchers in 2020 by producing multiple publications that rank in the top 1% by citations in their field over the past 11 years. These luminaries are building next-generation batteries, fighting disease with nanosponges, genome engineering with CRISPR, and more.
| |
Jacobs School alumni kickstart Dean’s Scholars of Excellence program
Education is the great equalizer. Jacobs School of Engineering alumni Mary Bui-Pham and Dan Pham have seen this play out in their own lives, and are paying it forward through an endowed scholarship supporting students with outstanding academic merit, including students who have made or show potential to contribute to diversity, equity and inclusion; first generation; and low-income engineering students. Their gift launched the larger Jacobs School of Engineering Dean’s Scholars of Excellence program, a school-wide scholarship program meant to advance equal access to a Jacobs School education.
| |
Upgrades to largest outdoor shake table begin
Construction is underway on a $16.3 million NSF-funded upgrade to the seismic simulator at UC San Diego. Over the next 10 months, the world’s largest outdoor shake table will undergo major construction as it gets more actuators and more power so that it can simulate up and down, left and right, as well as pitch, roll and yaw motions, which is known as six degrees of freedom. When completed in October 2021, the shake table will be able to reproduce earthquake motions with unprecedented accuracy. Data analysis from structures tested on the shake table has led to many changes in the nation’s building codes in the shake table’s 15-year history.
| |
New radar enables self-driving cars to see clearly no matter the weather
A new approach to fusing radars could make it possible for self-driving cars to navigate safely in bad weather and at night. Electrical engineers at UC San Diego developed a clever way to improve the imaging capability of existing radar sensors so that they accurately predict the shape and size of objects in the scene. The system consists of two radar sensors placed on the hood and spaced an average car’s width apart. Having two radar sensors arranged this way enables the system to see more space and detail than a single radar sensor. The team is working with Toyota to fuse the new radar technology with cameras.
| |
Virus-like probes could help make rapid COVID-19 testing more accurate
Nanoengineers at UC San Diego have developed new and improved probes, known as positive controls, that could make it easier to validate rapid, point-of-care diagnostic tests for COVID-19 across the globe. The positive controls, made from virus-like particles, are stable and easy to manufacture. Researchers led by Nicole Steinmetz, director of the Center for Nano-ImmunoEngineering, say the controls have the potential to improve the accuracy of new COVID-19 tests that are simpler, faster and cheaper, making it possible to expand testing to low-resource, underserved areas. Read coverage in Mashable.
| |
A flexible, rechargeable battery 10x more powerful than state of the art
A team of researchers has developed a flexible, rechargeable silver oxide-zinc battery with 5 to 10 times greater areal energy density than existing batteries. The battery is also easier to manufacture; while most flexible batteries need to be manufactured in sterile conditions, under vacuum, this one can be screen printed in normal lab conditions. The device can be used in flexible, stretchable electronics for wearables as well as soft robotics. The team includes nanoengineers at the Jacobs School, and researchers at California-based company ZPower. Read coverage in Chemical and Engineering News.
| |
Passing of professor emeritus Shao-chi Lin
Shao-chi Lin, Professor Emeritus of Engineering at UC San Diego, died on October 8, 2020 at the age of 95. He is remembered by former students and colleagues as a talented and caring teacher, mentor and researcher; and an active member of the campus community. Lin was an internationally renowned engineer who specialized in gas dynamics, which has applications in many areas including the re-entry of spacecraft into earth's atmosphere after space travel. Two students who earned PhDs under his guidance, Robert Akins and Richard Sandstrom, applied their expertise on excimer lasers gained in his lab by founding Cymer. This San Diego-based company grew to lead the world in the design and manufacture of laser light sources used for making computer chips for computers, phones and many other electronic devices.
| |
Building momentum in 2020There were plenty of headwinds in 2020, but the Jacobs School community rallied to continue building momentum as we supported COVID-19 research, ensured student success through the UC San Diego Return to Learn program, and worked to build a school culture where every student, staff member and professor feels empowered to bring their whole self to the classroom, the lab, the office, and the screen. In 2020, we jumped to #9 in the US News and World Report Best Engineering Schools rankings and continued to grow our research enterprise, with expenditures up 34% over the last five years. More 2020 highlights are in this video.
| |
Did someone forward you this email? Sign up to receive this email in your inbox.
| |
|
|
|
|