Friday, January 29, 2010

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Botnet Judo / Spam Templates in the News



Ars Technica and The Wired Campus blog from The Chronicle of Higher Education both wrote, this week, about new spam-related computer science research to be presented in about a month at the being presented by UC San Diego and

The paper the stories described is "Botnet Judo: Fighting Spam with Itself." It will be presented at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS). Andreas Pitsillidis, Kirill Levchenko, Christian Kreibich, Chris Kanich, Geoffrey M. Voelker, Vern Paxson, Nicholas Weaver, and Stefan Savage are the authors, from the Department of Computer Science at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and from the International Computer Science Institute at UC Berkeley.

A short bit of the Ars Technica story is below:
The creators of Botnet Judo, thanks to their work on Storm, decided that the use of templates might provide an opportunity to recognize any spam based on the same template. Since normal e-mail would be very unlikely to match a template by chance, this method should have a very low false-positive rate, where a legitimate message is recognized as spam.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Better Computing, Communication for Emergency Medical Personnel at Disaster Sites

photo caption: WIISARD SAGE principal investigator William "Bill" Griswold tests display of 'rich feeds' data from multiple sources during a 2008 MMST emergency preparedness exercise in southern San Diego County.


Computer science professor William Griswold is helping to lead a UC San Diego project to find better ways for emergency officials and first responders to talk to each other and share data on the ground at the scene of a natural or man-made disaster – even when the local communications infrastructure is out of commission.


“As the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti has demonstrated so starkly, communication is a critical ingredient in any medical response to a disaster,” said William Griswold, principal investigator on the WIISARD SAGE project and a professor in the Computer Science and Engineering department of UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering. “A critical issue for disaster response is group or collaborative computing in mobile environments. With this new project, we hope to overcome several inter-related problems that inhibit the successful use of information technologies at disaster sites to manage medical care.” (Griswold is also leading CitiSense, the Jacobs School project to create a pollution monitoring network that relies on cell phones and small environmental sensors that people wear.)



Approximately $1.5 million annually over two years in “stimulus” funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) will underwrite the WIISARD SAGE project. NLM is one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Monday, January 25, 2010

NanoEngineering Professor and "Nanoburrs"

Liangfang Zhang, the second author on the "nanoburr" paper in last week's PNAS that has received alot of attention is now a professor in the Department of NanoEngineering at the Jacobs School.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Researchers at MIT and Harvard Medical School have built targeted nanoparticles that can cling to artery walls and slowly release medicine, an advance that potentially provides an alternative to drug-releasing stents in some patients with cardiovascular disease.

The particles, dubbed “nanoburrs” because they are coated with tiny protein fragments that allow them to stick to target proteins, can be designed to release their drug payload over several days. They are one of the first such targeted particles that can precisely home in on damaged vascular tissue, says Omid Farokhzad, associate professor at Harvard Medical School and an author of a paper describing the nanoparticles in the Jan. 18 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


Chan, J.; Zhang, L.; Tong, R.; Ghosh, D.; Gao, W.; Liao, G.; Yuet, K.; Gray, D.; Rhee, J-W.; Cheng, J.; Golomb, G.; Libby, P.; Langer, R.; Farokhzad, O. C. "Spatiotemporal controlled delivery of nanoparticles to injured vasculature", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2010.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Bioengineering Grad Student Research Covered by BBC, Published in Nature


The BBC described the UC San Diego findings published this week in the journal Nature highlighting microbial "group blink" that could lead to new kinds of environmental sensors. The work is also a interesting step forward in the world of synthetic biology. A pair of bioengineering graduate students from the Jacobs School of Engineering worked on this project: Tal Danino and Octavio Mondragon.

The original UCSD press release by Kim McDonald is here.

The video is here.

My blog post yesterday about this work is here.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Undergraduate Engineering Diversity Professional Organizations at the Jacobs School Honored






Congratulations to the Jacobs School’s undergraduate chapters of the National Society of Black Engineers, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and the Society of Women Engineers. This trio of undergraduate engineering diversity professional organizations won a 2009 UC San Diego Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action and Diversity Award.

The program recognizes individuals, departments and organizational units who have made outstanding contributions in support of UC San Diego’s commitment to diversity.

A ceremony will be held on Tuesday, February 9, 2010, at 2:00 p.m. at the Price Center West Ballrooms to recognize all of the 2009 Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action and Diversity Awards Recipients.

More info on each of the winning student organizations is below:

UCSD Chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers
NSBE offers its members leadership training, professional development, mentoring opportunities, career placement services and more. NSBE’s mission is to increase the number of culturally responsible Black engineers who excel academically, succeed professionally, and positively impact the community.

UCSD Chapter of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers
The UCSD SHPE chapter provides a medium in which Hispanic/Latino students studying engineering at the Jacobs School can network with other Hispanic engineers in the area. In addition to networking opportunities, the UCSD SHPE Chapter provides a way for students to receive tips and encouragement to excel academically and professionally, as well as opportunities for students to give back to others through community service and outreach.


UCSD Chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE)
The Jacobs School of Engineering at UCSD enrolls many of the brightest, hardest-working students in the country. We know the most valuable engineer in the workplace is a well-rounded, resourceful one. The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) plays an important role in the development of such an engineer. We provide many activities and events to aid our members in achieving these goals.

Here is a list of many of the engineering-related student organizations at the Jacobs School:

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Group Blink: Synchronized Genetic Clock in journal Nature




"Quorum sensing" rocks. No, it's not about trying to figure out if there are enough people at your homeowner's association meeting to vote to outlaw large makeshift greenhouses on the front lawn..."quorum sensing" is one of the keys to a new genetic clock that bioengineering graduate students from the Jacobs School (Tal Danino and Octavio Mondragon) helped create. Quorum sensing has to do with engineered bacteria "talking" to each other and then blinking in unison. This group blink is the next big step in a long line of research breakthroughs that could one day lead to bacteria that serve as sensors that blink when a poison appears in the environment.


Read the full UC San Diego press release (written by my colleague Kim McDonald) here...the first few paragraphs are pasted below:


Researchers at UC San Diego who last year genetically engineered bacteria to keep track of time by turning on and off fluorescent proteins within their cells have taken another step toward the construction of a programmable genetic sensor. The scientists recently synchronized these bacterial “genetic clocks” to blink in unison and engineered the bacterial genes to alter their blinking rates when environmental
conditions change.

Their latest achievement, detailed in a paper published in the January 21 issue of the journal Nature, is a crucial step in creating genetic sensors that might one day provide humans with advance information about temperature, poisons and other potential hazards in the environment by monitoring changes in the bacterium’s blinking rates. Watch a video showing the UCSD team’s blinking genetic clocks here.

“Programming living cells is one defining goal of the new field of synthetic biology,” said Jeff Hasty, associate professor of biology and bioengineering at UCSD who headed the research team with Lev Tsimring, associate director of UCSD’s BioCircuits Institute.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

UCSD Global TIES Haiti Earthquake Relief Campaign


Below is an excerpt of an open letter from Mandy Bratton, Ph.D. Director, Global TIES at the Jacobs School.
I know that many of you have been moved, as I have, by the stories and images emerging from Haiti in the wake of last week’s devastating earthquake. We all want to do something to help. Rest assured that Global TIES intends to help Haiti rebuild itself, once it is safe and appropriate for us to be on the
ground.

In the meantime, the best way to help is through financial contributions. Immediate medical aid is urgently needed to stem the death toll from this disaster. To this end, Global TIES has teamed up with Partners in Health, a non-governmental organization co-founded by Dr. Paul Farmer that has been providing healthcare in Haiti for the past 25 years. (To learn more about Dr. Farmer and his groundbreaking work, read “Mountains Beyond Mountains” by Tracy Kidder.)

Global TIES has created a fund-raising page on the Partners in Health web site: http://act.pih.org/page/outreach/view/haitiearthquake/ucsdglobalties.

Please join me in giving what you can via this web site. Partners in Health has agreed to track contributions made from UC San Diego via this site, so if you are part of the UC San Diego community, please include your UCSD email address on your donation form. All proceeds will go to Partners in Health.


Folow Global TIES on Facebook and Twitter

NanoEngineers Use DNA to Place Nano Scale Materials


NanoEngineering professor Jennifer Cha recently published new work on using biomolecules, such as DNA and proteins, to engineer the orientation and placement of nano scale materials into the desired device architectures that are reproducible in high yields and at low costs.


The paper titled “Large Area Spatially Ordered Arrays of Gold Nanoparticles Directed by Lithographically Confined DNA Origami,” appeared in Nature Nanotechology.


“Self-assembled structures are often too small and affordable lithographic patterns are too large,” said Albert Hung, lead author of the Nature Nanotechnology paper and a post doc working in Cha’s Biomolecular Materials and Nanoscale Assembly Lab. “But rationally designed synthetic DNA nanostructures allow us to access length scales between 5 and 100 nanometers and bridge the two systems."
This story recently appeared as the top news story on Semiconductor Online.

Healthy Desk Life...it takes some effort


Screen time, computer time, desk time, study time, writing time, Facebooking time...so much of our lives now take place in front of the computer. And it can take its tool.

A friend here on campus recently sent me a link to various ergonomic resources provided by UCSD. Check them out...you'll be glad you did.

http://blink.ucsd.edu/safety/occupational/ergonomics/fund/stretches.html

By the way...way back in 2009, I linked to a Calit2 project called "Active Desk" to make "treadmill workstations" safe and affordable. (Tiffany Fox's full Calit2 story is here.)

Friday, January 15, 2010

Structural Engineering Professor Featured in 10 News story about Earthqake Safetey and Differences between construcion in California and Hati

Check out the 10 News story about construction practices in California and in Hati. (Watch the video here.) The story includes insights from UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering structural professor Jose Restrepo.

Read the full story here. Below is an excerpt from the story.

"In Haiti, we are dealing with structures that are similar in a way to the construction we used to do 100 years ago here in the U.S.," said Jose Restrepo, professor of structural engineering at UCSD. "Those are structures that do not incorporate any seismic design provisions that are very precarious where they are built."

Restrepo talked to 10News about seismic advances being made in schools throughout the University of California system. "Every one of us chips in and we are working in a collaborative environment to see what is best for our region and trickle down to all the regions in the world," he said.

Overheard Cell Phone Conversations = Raw Material for Art Project



"OVERHEARD" OPENS TONIGHT AT GALLERY@CALIT2


Inspired by overheard snippets of cell phone conversations that most people
would ignore, Wendy Richmond and collaborator Michael Chladil have taken
background noise and turned it into interactive artwork.
I am definitely going to check this out...and will report back with my thoughts.
Did you go see the exhibit? Thoughts on the show? leave comments here.
More info from the Calit2 announcement below.

"Overheard" opens Jan. 15, 2010 and runs through March 12, 2010 at the gallery@calit2. The installation consists of multiple displays of textual graphics, based on overheard New York City cell phone conversations ranging in subject matter from the poetic to the banal. The audio, made up of recordings of conversations spoken by actors, is triggered as the audience moves through the gallery space. In addition, two interactive rope&pulley systems allow visitors to interface with the displayed graphics, changing their shape and size. The visual elements of the fragmented conversations continue onto the gallery display walls on the first floor of Atkinson Hall. The artists hope that the installation will provide viewers an opportunity to reframe the barrage of private and public expression that they navigate in their everyday lives.
Friday, January 15, 2010

Panel Discussion: Ramesh Rao, Ricardo Dominguez, Benjamin Bratton, Wendy Richmond and Michael Chladil6pm-7pm Calit2

Theater Opening Reception:
Hours 11am-5pm Monday-FridayJanuary 18-March 12, 2010
Free Admission
* gallery will be closed January 18 in observance of Martin Luther King Day

Atkinson Hall
9500 Gilman DriveLa Jolla, CA 92093
http://gallery.calit2.net/

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Computer Science Grad Student in Computerworld's "10 Best IT Videos of 2009"

Computerworld: The 10 best IT videos of '09

"The cameras were rolling in tech land, and the results are all over YouTube," wrote Computerworld. And one of the YouTube gems recognized featured Cynthia Taylor, a computer science PhD student at the Jacobs School. In the short, impromptu video, Taylor explained how to improve the Starbucks experience with thin-client computing. I shot the video at the most recent research review for the UCSD Center for Wireless Communications. Computerworld's Patrick Thibodeau named the video as one of "The 10 best IT videos of '09"

The category:

Best Video for Improving the Starbucks Experience.

Imagine if a Starbucks latte also came with server-based resources available to your iPhone. The presenter, a Ph.D. student at Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California-San Diego, makes the case for "Exploiting Proximal Resources for Better User-Perceived Performance."


My original Jacobs School blog post is here:


Cyberlink January 2010


UC San Diego CyberLink is a monthly digest of news and events related to cyberinfrastructure from San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), Jacobs School of Engineering, UC San Diego Libraries, Administrative Computing & Telecommunications (ACT) and Center for Research in Biological Structures (CRBS). If you have news to share about cyberinfrastructure-related research, applications or activities on the UC San Diego campus, please send them to cyberlink@ucsd.edu.

Coming to a Theater Near You: High-Tech Digital Cinema
For the fourth year in a row, Calit2 hosted CineGrid, an international conference that grew out of Calit2's exploration of 'extreme' digital cinema, leveraging next-generation cyberinfrastructure to promote higher-resolution imagery, better sound as well as more secure and efficient distribution of digital media over photonic networks.

Making MuSyC: Scientists Explore Energy Efficiency in Multi-Scale Computing Systems
Researchers from Calit2, the Jacobs School of Engineering and SDSC are part of a new Multi-Scale Systems Center (MuSyC) charged with finding better ways to design computing systems of all sizes, notably by focusing on energy efficiency as a tool to get computer systems to work more efficiently.

Getting Intense About Data: The SDSC 'Gordon' Cluster
SDSC Interim Director Mike Norman and SDSC Associate Director Allan Snavely discuss details and the potential of the new Gordon HPC system scheduled to come online mid next year in an in-depth interview with Linux Magazine's Douglas Eadline.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Reflections on the NSF Supercomputer Center Program
Calit2 Director Larry Smarr delivered this position paper to the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Future of High Performance Computing Workshop in early December. In it he reviewed the successes, failures and continuing challenges of the NSF supercomputing program that he helped create.

NSF Awards SDSC, ASU $1.7 Million for National OpenTopography LiDAR Facility
SDSC and Arizona State University have been awarded a $1.7 million grant from the NSF to operate an internet-based national data facility for high-resolution topographic data acquired with LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technology.

Engineers Help Secure California Highways and Roads
At the UC San Diego Englekirk Structural Engineering Center, engineers tested the kinds of retaining walls used on highways, roads, bridges and oceanside bluffs. NSF-funded cyberinfrastructure ensured that engineers around the world could benefit from the generated data.

A UC Technology Leader Unveils a Bright New Library
Amidst budgetary doom and gloom, UC San Diego's newly renovated Arts Library opens its doors with advanced technology infrastructure and features.

UC San Diego Experts Calculate How Much Information Americans Consume
With corporate funding, a team of UCSD experts led by Prof. Roger Bohn is measuring the total amount of information in the world, and in a first report, tackles U.S. household consumption of information, which he pegs at 3.6 zettabytes. (One zettabyte is 1,000,000,000 trillion bytes.)

Universities Challenged to Develop Technology Solutions for a Carbon-Constrained World
Calit2's Larry Smarr, Tom DeFanti and Jerry Sheehan teamed with CANARIE's former chief research officer, Bill St. Arnaud, to co-author the cover story in the November-December 2009 issue of the journal EDUCAUSE Review, urging universities to pave the way for a "greener future."

San Diegans and their Cell Phones will help Monitor Air Pollution
Computer scientists from UC San Diego are developing a system to provide up-to-the-minute information on outdoor and indoor air quality, based on environmental information collected by sensors attached to the backpacks, purses, jackets and board shorts of San Diegans going about daily life.

HPWREN Featured in NSF Daily Digest
The world has gone wireless, even in the wilderness, thanks to HPWREN, the High-Performance Wireless Research and Education Network that began in 2000 with the objective of connecting remote science sites to a high-speed network. The wireless network covers nearly 20,000 square miles in San Diego, Riverside and Imperial counties in Southern California. HPWREN was featured in the December 1 edition of the NSF's Daily Digest.

SDSC, UC San Diego, LBNL Team Wins SC09 'Storage Challenge' Award
A research team from SDSC, UC San Diego and the UC's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has won the Storage Challenge competition at SC09, the leading international conference on high-performance computing, networking, storage and analysis. The team highlighted the innovative flash-memory technology behind SDSC's new Dash and upcoming Gordon systems.

Calit2 Brings Future of Visualization and Global Collaboration to SC09
In Portland, Oregon, for SC09, Calit2 was 'embedded' in the KAUST showcase, where a NexCAVE system was connected to the StarCAVE virtual-reality environment at UCSD, and in the CENIC booth, where Tom DeFanti and George Papen delivered talks.

Students Help San Diego Region Secure $154 Million in Solar Bonds
Mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) students at UC San Diego played a critical role in helping the university and the San Diego region secure a total of $154 million in federal bonds for solar installation projects. Such distributed solar installations are part of the ongoing convergence of the traditional electric grid and cyberinfrastructure.


MARK YOUR CALENDAR…
… for these upcoming cyberinfrastructure-connected events and training sessions. All events will be held at UC San Diego (except where noted otherwise).

Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010, 9:00am-12:00pm, SDSC Training Room 279 (West Building)
StudentTECH: A Celebration of Cultural Diversity through Digital Art and Media
In honor of the celebration of Black History and American Cultural Diversity in February, this workshop will incorporate the use of collected and found photography, as well as other graphic imagery relevant to the theme of personal identity. Participants will create a collage that represents the participants’ own individual cultural and historical family heritage. The artwork created will be showcased at the UCSD Price Center. Please contact Ange Mason via email or at 858-534-5064 to reserve your space.

Jan. 20-21, 2010, CSE Building, UC San Diego
Center for Networked Systems Winter Research Review
The agenda will include talks by CNS's industry affiliates on current research challenges and concerns, progress reports from UC San Diego researchers conducting CNS-sponsored projects, a graduate student research poster session, and numerous opportunities for information interactions with CNS faculty, researchers and graduate students. Attendance is limited to industry sponsors and invited guests. For more information, contact Kathy Krane via email or call 858-822-5964.

Jan. 25-28, 2010, Calit2 Auditorium, Atkinson Hall
8th Intl Conference on Creating, Connecting and Collaborating through Computing (C5)
This conference, first launched in Japan, is targeted at researchers, technology developers, educators and technology users interested in developing and enabling human-oriented creation, connection and collaboration processes. Focus areas of the 2010 conference, to be hosted by Calit2, include: collaboration and communication; technology-human interaction; visualization; virtual worlds; social networks; and learning. Keynote speakers will include Calit2 Director and Jacobs School Professor Larry Smarr, and sci-fi writer and retired SDSU Computer Science Professor Vernor Vinge.

Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2010, 4:30pm- 6:30pm, SDSC Auditorium (East Building)
TeacherTECH: Step-by-Step Biotech for the High School Educator: An 8-Part Workshop Series Beginning January 26
High school teachers are invited to attend an exciting new TeacherTECH workshop series focused on biotech. This series will provide building blocks needed to introduce standards-based, hands-on laboratory activities into your lesson plans. May be used as stand-alone activities or as a combined series of labs to create an entire biotechnology course. The first of this eight-part series will focus on quick, easy ways to teach the principles of chromatography, a powerful method for separating complex mixtures into component parts based on molecular properties. We will extract the DNA from your own cheek cells, and then watch it precipitate. Bring only your imagination and take home your own DNA - in a necklace! Teachers may choose to attend one or all of the workshops in this series, depending on their interest. Please contact Ange Mason via email or at 858-534-5064 for more details.

Feb. 2-3, 2010 DoubleTree Hotel, Washington D.C.
National Science Foundation TeraGrid Workshop on Cyber-GIS
This NSF Cyber-GIS workshop will take place in conjunction with the 2010 UCGIS Winter Meeting. The workshop will focus on the following:
Complex geospatial systems and simulation of geographic dynamics
Computational intensity of spatial analysis and modeling
Data-intensive geospatial computation and visualization
High-performance, distributed, and/or collaborative GIS
Geospatial ontology and semantic web
Geospatial middleware, Clouds, and Grids
Open source GIS
Participatory spatial decision support systems
Science drivers for, and applications of Cyber-GIS
Spatial data infrastructure

Feb. 9-11, 2010 -- Calit2, Atkinson Hall, UC San Diego
SDR Development Using Software Communications Architecture
This is a 3-day course introducing software-defined radio (SDR) development. The course is organized by Canada's Communications Research Centre (CRC) in collaboration with Calit2. Registration required for in-person or webinar attendance.



Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Searching for the Tomb of Genghis Khan

Photograph courtesy of Michael Hennig

Searching for the tomb of Genghis Khan…that’s Albert Yu-Min Lin’s day job. He is a Jacobs School alumnus (BS [MAE], MS, PhD [materials science]) who runs the Genghis Khan tomb-exploration project through CISA3, which is affiliated with UCSD’s Calit2.

The National Geographic Society named Lin on of their Adventurers of the Year for 2009, and he is now in the running for the first ever National Geographic Adventure Readers’ Choice Adventurer of the Year.

Dig around the National Geographic Adventure Web site and learn about all the adventurers and then vote for the most outstanding.

Be sure to look through the photo gallery from Lin’s summer 2009 expedition to northern Mongolia’s Henity Province or “Forbidden Zone.”

What is so exciting about Lin’s adventure is that it didn’t stop when the crew returned from Mongolia. They continue to explore the Forbidden Zone via Calit2’s StarCAVE. Read all about it on the National Geographic Adventure Web site:

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

UCSD Business Students Help Launch Venture Fund


The students at UC San Diego are increasingly entrepreneurial. The huge success of the UCSD Entrepreneurship Challenge is just one indicator. Another indicator is the new venture capital fund (The Rady Venture Fund) that students from the UC San Diego Rady School of Business will help to manage.

Read Dean Calbreath's write-up of the fund in the San Diego Union Tribune here.
Read Bruce Bigelow's story at Xconomy here.

Yesterday, I was editing a video interview we shot with Raj Krishnan, a recent Bioengineering PhD from the Jacobs School who also won various parts of the UCSD Entrepreneurship Challenge last year and is now in the midst of running a company focused on early-detection of cancer (Biological Dynamics)...Krishnan was talking about the importance of the entrepreneurship challenge for fostering the start-up spirit on campus.

PS: unrelated link from Voice of San Diego: UCSD Professor (James Fowler) Gets Colbert Bump


Monday, January 11, 2010

Wireless in the Wilderness


"Wiring the Wilderness" is the NSF headline for their story about UC San Diego's HPWREN.
Photo caption: An HPWREN automated digital camera on Lyons Peak, Calif., captured an image around 8:00 p.m. on Sunday, July 23, 2006, that shows the extent of the Horse Fire. The camera remotely collected many images that day, which the researchers were able to use to better understand the wildfire. Photo credit: HPWREN


HPWREN is a National Science Foundation funded network research project, which also functions as a collaborative cyberinfrastructure on research, education, and first responder activities. It includes creating, demonstrating, and evaluating a non-commercial, prototype, high-performance, wide-area, wireless network in San Diego, Riverside, and Imperial counties. The network includes backbone nodes at the UC San Diego and San Diego State University campuses, and a number of "hard to reach" areas in remote environments.




Friday, January 8, 2010

Dr. Michael J. Sailor Seminar Today, January 8th at 2pm

Talk title:
Functional silicon nanostructures for in-vitro and in-vivo diagnostics

Who is speaking?
Michael J. Sailor, Ph.D.
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Department of Bioengineering, and Department of Nanoengineering, University of California, San Diego

When and Where?
Department of Bioengineering and the Institute of Engineering in Medicine BE281
Friday, January 8, 20102:00-3:00pm
Fung AuditoriumPowell-Focht Bioengineering Hall
University of California, San Diego Map to Location

Abstract:
Porous Si possesses several properties that make it advantageous for medical diagnostic applications, including low toxicity, high surface area, tunable pore sizes and volumes, and flexible surface chemistry. In this talk, the electrochemical synthesis and use of nanostructured porous silicon films, microparticles, and nanoparticles will be described. The use of the photoluminescence and reflective optical response of these materials for in-vitro and in-vivo sensing and drug delivery applications will be presented.

For a complete listing of bioengineering seminars, go to:
http://be-web.ucsd.edu/events/seminars

Thursday, January 7, 2010

UC San Diego's Green Ink in the LA Times


On Decebmer 27, 2009, the Los Angeles Times ran a story about Byron Washom, UC San Diego's first director of strategic energy initiatives. In other words, he's the "green czar of UCSD."




Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Video Contest for Jacobs School Students



San Diego, CA, January 05, 2010 -- Calling all Jacobs School engineering students—both undergrads and graduate students. Share you best video stories about your research, academic experiences and engineering-related projects. Video Contest runs January 4 to February 15, 2010.

Got a cool research project? Tell the world with video.

Want to share your Jacobs School experiences with future students? Get on camera!

Details
Digital entries only (DVD or USB) .
Run times no more than 3 minutes.

Prizes!
First Prize: $200 gift card at the UC San Diego bookstore
Second Prize: $100 gift card at the UC San Diego bookstore
Third Prize: $50 gift card at the UC San Diego bookstore

Submissions:
Name, email and phone number with entry to:
Communications
Jacobs School of Engineering
EBU-1, 7th Floor

More information:
Cheryl Harris, Ph.D., Director of Communications, Jacobs School of Engineering.
cdharris@ucsd.edu

Deadline: February 15, 2010.