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| NEWS June 2021
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When the ecosystem engages
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Last week, at our Corporate Affiliates Program (CAP) board meeting, we talked about developing talent and ensuring that ALL our Jacobs School of Engineering students have what they need to succeed. Industry and government partners came to me at our CAP Board asking how we can function as a unified team to support development of an innovation workforce that fully reflects society. I sat back and thought, wow, everyone here is fully engaged and working together.
Those are golden moments for me as a dean. It's not when the final goal has been achieved, but when the machinery engages, when the ecosystem engages, and I feel that we have a shared line of sight to the goal. Our student diversity and equity metrics can and will improve. I'm never satisfied with the rate of improvement, but it's a good feeling to have industry and government partners leaning in to engage with us in this work. With this kind of partnership, we know we can succeed.
We have incredibly talented and motivated people all across the Jacobs School working on the myriad issues at play when it comes to diversifying our student body, and crucially, supporting all our students academically and personally.
We are a big school with incredible, diverse talent. When it comes to fully engaging, mentoring and empowering our students, there is still plenty of opportunity. Ensuring tomorrow's innovation workforce reflects the diversity of our society is a concrete way that we can work together to leverage engineering and computer science for the good of society. I encourage you to get involved with us in this critical work. As our current partners know, we know how to listen, and we know how to take action. They are confident in their investment in us.
If you are in industry, government, the NGO world, or any other sector and are looking to engage in terms of helping us develop that brilliant, diverse student talent, a great place to start is our team in the Corporate Affiliates Program. They can connect you with the right people anywhere in the Jacobs School.
As always, I can be reached at DeanPisano@eng.ucsd.edu
Sincerely,
Al
Albert ("Al") P. Pisano, Dean
UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering
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Graduating ACES Scholars are diversifying engineering
Xavier Perez, Yoon Jung Choi, and Armando Godoy-Velasquez are members of the first cohort of ACES Scholars to graduate from the Jacobs School of Engineering. Students in the NSF-funded program are highly motivated students from low income backgrounds that are traditionally underrepresented in engineering. Congratulations to these students, and to all our Jacobs School engineering and computer science students who are graduating this year.
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Titans of industry, academia team up to advance engineering in medicine
As the silos that once separated engineering and medicine continue to dissolve, there is a growing need on campus for facilities where engineers, physicians and medical researchers can work in the same physical research ecosystems. Pioneering bioengineer, professor Shu Chien, and his wife K.C., joined forces with Peter Farrell, founder of medical device company ResMed, to support this vision. The Chiens and Farrell each recently donated $1.5 million to support programmatic expansion of engineering and medicine on campus. A large collaborative research facility for engineering and medicine in the Jacobs School’s newest building, Franklin Antonio Hall, will be named in recognition of their generosity.
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World’s largest outdoor earthquake simulator undergoes major upgrade
A major upgrade to the world’s largest outdoor earthquake simulator recently reached a milestone when the facility’s floor—all 300,000 lbs of it—was put back into place. When completed this fall, the simulator will have the ability to reproduce multi-dimensional earthquake motions with unprecedented accuracy to make structures and their residents safer during strong shakes.The simulator, or shake table, will be able to test the heaviest and tallest structures to gauge how well they would withstand various earthquakes. The first test following the upgrade will feature a full-scale, 10-story, cross-laminated timber building. The upgrade is funded by a $16.3 million grant from the NSF.
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Helping robots better navigate emergency rooms
Computer scientists at UC San Diego have developed a more accurate navigation system that will allow robots to better negotiate busy clinical environments in general and emergency departments more specifically. The researchers have also developed a dataset of open source videos to help train robotic navigation systems in the future. The system is based on an algorithm that takes into account how many people are clustered together in a space and how quickly and abruptly these people are moving. Read coverage in PC Magazine.
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From San Diego to Mars via the Perseverance Rover team
When he was 14 and a junior high school student in Iran in 2004, Ryan Alimo watched the twin Spirit and Opportunity NASA rovers land on Mars. After earning his PhD in computational science at the Jacobs School of Engineering, Alimo is now a data scientist and project leader at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, and was part of the team responsible for the successful landing of the Perseverance rover on Mars. “It was an emotional moment,” said Alimo. “A few months back, we were testing the rover outside my office. Now it’s on another planet.”
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Blood glucose monitoring without the finger pricks
Nanoengineers at UC San Diego have developed a device that can measure glucose in sweat with the touch of a fingertip—no needles required. Personalized algorithms translate each person’s sweat glucose to their blood glucose levels. In tests, the algorithm was more than 95% accurate in predicting blood glucose levels before and after meals. To calibrate the device, a person with diabetes would need a finger prick only once or twice per month, compared to existing devices which require multiple pricks a day. Read coverage in US News.
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Ordinary microscope sees in super resolution
A new technology improves the resolution of ordinary light microscopes so they can be used to directly observe finer structures and details in living cells. The technology developed by electrical engineers at UC San Diego turns a conventional light microscope into what’s called a super-resolution microscope. The "secret sauce" is a specially engineered material that shortens the wavelength of light as it illuminates the sample—this shrunken light is what essentially enables the microscope to image in higher resolution.
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Making ultra-low temperature batteries safer
A new technology could dramatically improve the safety of lithium-ion batteries that operate with gas electrolytes at ultra-low temperatures. Nanoengineers at UC San Diego developed a separator—the part of the battery that serves as a barrier between the anode and cathode—that keeps the gas-based electrolytes in these batteries from vaporizing. This new separator could, in turn, help prevent the buildup of pressure inside the battery that leads to swelling and explosions. This work builds on a previous study published in Science by UC San Diego nanoengineers which was the first to report the development of lithium-ion batteries that perform well at temperatures as low as -60 C.
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A 'self-stirring' pill enhances drug bioavailability
Nanoengineers at the Jacobs School are working to increase the bioavailability of oral drugs by incorporating a built-in stirring capability into traditional drug tablets. This work is bridging the field of microrobots with the pharmaceutical industry. The experimental pills contain micro-engines made from magnesium microparticles that are partially coated with a thin layer of titanium dioxide. In vivo studies using animal models demonstrated that the enhanced pills greatly improved the absorption and bioavailability of aspirin, both immediately post administration and at longer time scales.
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Improved maps for self-driving vehicles win Research Expo 2021
From monitoring the structural integrity of airplane wings, to improving lithographic 3D printing processes, to creating better maps for self-driving cars, this year’s Research Expo symposium showcased the depth and breadth of work done by graduate engineering and computer science students at the Jacobs School of Engineering. Computer science Ph.D. students David Paz-Ruiz and Hengyuan Zhang took the top prize for work focused on improving the maps that self-driving vehicles use to navigate the world. Thank you to everyone who participated in Research Expo this year!
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