Sleep Talking All Over Campus: Energy Dashboard

It's the first monday of the Spring Quarter at the Jacobs School, and any students (or professors or staff) who feel like they are "sleep-talking" through parts of their day in order to conserve energy are in good company. With Energy Dashboard, the entire UCSD campus has the opportunity to "sleep-talk" and save energy...the kind of energy the comes from the outlet and is generated by UCSD's solar installations and natural gas co-generation plant.

Energy Dashboard is an online tool that lets anyone track the energy consumption of buildings all across campus. The next phase, which has already begun, is to begin monitoring energy usage at the workspace level, so that people can track their energy use in order to find ways to conserve. One of the big energy conservation opportunities comes out of the "Sleep-talking" breakthrough from computer science PhD Yuvraj Agarwal (who is now a full-time research scientist at UCSD, working on Energy Dashbaord). The great thing about the "sleep talking" approach is that it offers a way for computers to be asleep (and thus barely using any energy) but at the same time available to be kicked into full operation if necessary. This means that people don't need to leave their computers on all weekend, just in case they need to connect remotely for 10 minutes on Sunday afternoon.

Part of this Energy Dashboard work will be presented at the Jacobs School Research Expo on April 15, 2010. The poster is "THE ENERGY DASHBOARD: IMPROVING THE VISIBILITY OF ENERGY CONSUMPTION AT A CAMPUS-WIDE SCALE ". It's poster #55 (of more than 240). Thomas Lee Weng is the computer science graduate student whose name appears first on the poster.

Read all about Energy Dashboard in the new story by Doug Ramsey from Calit2.

Sungho Jin is giving a Bioengineering talk on April 2

Professor Sungho Jin from MAE Dept here at the Jacobs School will give a talk in the Bioengineering Department on Friday April 2 at PM. More info here:
http://www.be.ucsd.edu/node/361

Talk title: "Biomaterials Nanogeometry for Tissue Engineering and Stem Cell Control"

Abstract: Proper control of nanostructures can produce a very large surface area and topographical features suitable for cell adhesion and growth. Vertically aligned yet laterally spaced TiO2 nanotubes have been utilized to significantly enhance osteoblast cell and bone growth in vitro and in vivo with strong osseointegration. Enhanced activities of cardiomyocytes, endothelial cells and chondrocytes have also been achieved, and guided osteogenic differentiation of stem cells has been demonstrated using substrate nanotopography alone without differentiation-inducing chemical agents.

Construction of various biomaterials configurations with nanotubes, nanowires, and networked nanofibers of metallic, ceramic or polymer materials will be described, and the implications of 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional architecturing on cell culture, tissue engineering, neural stimulation, stem cell control and drug delivery will be discussed.

Keep up to date on all the Jacobs School Bioengineering seminars here.

It's Spring Quarter 2010 at the Jacobs School!

It's the first day of Spring Quarter 2010 at the Jacobs School. Bye bye spring break!

One good way to keep tabs on the happenings of the Jacobs School is through the RSS feed maintained by Engineering Student Services (ESS). Check it out here:

http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/xml/student/recent_news.xml