World Premier: Forbidden Tomb of Genghis Khan

What: World Premier: Forbidden Tomb of Genghis Khan at Calit2, UC San Diego.

A National Geographic Expedition Documentary featuring
Calit2 Research Scientist, Albert Yu‐Min Lin, PhDA National Geographic Expedition Documentary
featuring Calit2 Research Scientist, Albert Yu‐Min Lin, PhD (and a Jacobs School of Engineering
alumnus).

When: Wednesday, November 9, 2011. 7PM Documentary, 8PM Panel Discussion with the Expedition Team.

Where: Calit2 Auditorium, Atkinson Hall | University of California San Diego

Forbidden Tomb of Genghis Khan will also be featured on the National Geographic Channel
Wednesday, November 9 at the following times: at 9pm EST, 8pm CT, 7pm MT, 9pm PT, 8pm AK, 7pm HI

UC San Diego Bioengineering Startup Genomatica Tops New Biofuels Ranking

Renewable chemicals developer Genomatica recently took the #1 spot in the 2011-12 “30 Hottest Companies in Renewable Chemicals and Materials” rankings by BiofuelsDigest. The rankings recognize innovation and achievement in renewable chemicals and materials development. (Read the Genomatica press release on this ranking.)

Genomatica CEO Christophe Schilling earned his Ph.D. in Bioengineering in 2000 at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, under the guidance of professor Bernhard Palsson, the Galetti Professor of Bioengineering in the Department of Bioengineering.

Schilling launched ­Genomatica along with Palsson in 2000. Their aim was to enable the chemical industry, through Genomatica’s novel bio-manufacturing processes, to transform its feedstock base and take the “petro” out of the “petro-chemicals” business. Currently, professor Palsson serves at the chairman of the Genomatica scientific advisory board.

* Genomatica is a 2011 winner of the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award (read Genomatica press release), was recently named one of ‘10 Big Green Ideas’ by Newsweek and has been featured on Forbes.com.

* Find links to Genomatica-related stories on this April 5 post on the Jacobs School of Engineering blog.

* The UC San Diego alumni magazine ran an item on Genomatica in September 2009.

* The full ranking list is below:

The 30 Hottest Companies in Renewable Chemicals and Biomaterials for 2011-12 are:

1.     Genomatica
2.     Solazyme
3.     Amyris
4.     Gevo
5.     LS9
6.     Dupont
7.     Codexis
8.     Genencor
9.     Novozymes
10.   ZeaChem

11.     Cargill
12.    Cobalt Technologies
13.     Waste Management
14.     Ceres
15.     Elevance Renewable Sciences
16.     Dow Chemical
17.     Enerkem
18.     Coskata
19.     OPX Biotechnologies

20.     DSM
21.     Myriant
22.     Cosan
23.     Mascoma
24.     KiOR
25.     DuPont Danisco
26.     Virent
27.     LanzaTech
28.     POET
29.     Metabolix
30.     Honeywell’s UOP

Pulse Summer 2011 is Out

Read Pulse the Jacobs School of Engineering alumni magazine (PDF)

Read Pulse the Jacobs School of Engineering alumni magazine (HTML)

The cover of Pulse is dedicated to the four new Master of Advanced Study programs being launched this fall by the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

Celebrate the Intellectual, Entrepreneurial, Cultural and Economic Power of Alumni!

With a network 130,000 strong, UC San Diego alumni continue to change the world across all industries—from science, technology, medicine and public service to business, education, politics and the arts—and make a global impact. Come back to campus to reconnect with friends and celebrate the achievements of all UC San Diego alumni during the third annual Alumni Weekend, June 16-19, which includes our 50 Years|50 Leaders Alumni Celebration. 

Visit http://alumni.ucsd.edu/alumniweekend for details.

Limbic Software (UCSD Alums) are Launching a New Game Monday

Friday May 20 at 4PM: We are giving away a free download of  Nuts! the new game from Limbic Software via the Jacobs School Facebook page. Limbic was started by UCSD computer scientists. Remember this story from the Jacobs School newsroom?  Cheat-Resistant 3D iPhone Game Relies on Score-Checking Replays

Junkyard Derby Prep

Below is an email that gives an inside look at Junkyard Derby, one of the great Jacobs School of Engineering annual events.

If you've never participated in the Junkyard Derby before, I can assure you that 15 seconds is a VERY long time, especially when other teams get all the best junk you wanted.

Dear Derby Junkies,

If you have done so already, thank you for registering for the 2011 Junkyard Derby. If you haven't done so yet, go do it now! Don't miss the biggest and funnest engineering event of the year. 

As a friendly reminder, all payments and registrations are due May 6th.

Junk Collections:

Do you want a head start at grabbing junk? 2 easy steps:

1. Attend 3 out of the 4 Saturday Junk Collections. The dates for the Junk Collections coming up are April 30th, May 7th, and May 14th, 2PM-5PM in Regents Parking Lot P705. You must help out at the Junk Collection for at least an hour each in order to be counted toward the head start. Make sure you sign in and out for your team.
2. A 15-second head start in grabbing junk, and DECaF points if you sign in for your org.

If you've never participated in the Junkyard Derby before, I can assure you that 15 seconds is a VERY long time, especially when other teams get all the best junk you wanted. 

Also, it is very important for as many teams as possible to attend these junk collections. The junk we collect in the upcoming weekends is all the junk YOU guys will get to use at the Derby. So the more people that go collect junk, the more and "better quality" junk you will get for your cars. 

How to build a Derby car:

Never participated in Junkyard Derby before? Worried about the seemingly insurmountable task of using power tools for some hands-on engineering? TESC has got you covered.

Come to the TESC GBM on May 4th at 7:30 PM in EBU2-584 (room subject to change).

Hope to see you at the Junk Collection tomorrow!

--

UCSD@50 Video

The latest installment of the UCSD@50 video series includes a bit about the Jacobs School alums (the Antonorsi brothers) who founded Chuao Chocolatier.

Science Fair / a Life-Long Journey

Computer engineering alumna Shirley Miranda has been involved in the San Diego Science and Engineering Fair since she was 13. And no, this is not a recurring nightmare! Watch the video below.




Miranda is also deeply involved in COSMOS. Check out Miranda's Cosmos YouTube video here.

Valley of the Khans Project in San Diego Business Journal

Luke Barrington, a UC San Diego electrical engineering PhD candidate and Albert Yu-Min Lin, who earned his undergrad and graduate degrees from the Jacobs School, are in a recent San Diego Business Journal article that describes the “Field Expedition: Mongolia — Valley of the Khans Project” that Lin is leading. The article also discusses the San Diego firm -- Digitaria Interactive Inc. -- that helped build the online experience that is so crucial to this National Geographic project that enables people from around the world to help in their exploration from their computers. Learn how you can participate here.

Sonali Nigam (Bioengineering Alumna) Wins UC Alumni “Change the World” Scholarship from UC San Diego Extension

Genentech engineer and University of California San Diego graduate Sonali Nigam has been selected to receive a UC Alumni “Change the World” Scholarship from UC San Diego Extension to pursue biotechnology management with the goal of one day creating an organization which enables the transfer of biotechnology processes and products to the developing world.

Sonali Nigam

Nigam graduated from UC San Diego with a degree in bioengineering in 2005. She works in the San Francisco Bay area for Genentech Inc., a leading biotechonology company that develops and manufactures drugs for treating cancer, asthma, cystic fibrosis and other diseases.

All persons who have received a bachelor’s degree or a graduate degree from any UC campus are eligible to apply by completing an online “Change the World” Scholarship form from the extension.ucsd.edu/scholarships Web site before the next deadline date of July 15, 2010.

Read the full story on the UC San Diego news Web site.

Raj Krishnan Voice of San Diego Series / Part 2

Part 2 of the ongoing series about Raj Krishnan is up on the Voice of San Diego site.  (Part 1 is here)

The story includes some info about two other Jacobs School alums: Roy Lefkowitz and Gene Hsiao.

Lefkowitz won the NanoEngineering best poster award at Research Expo 2010: "An Early Point-of-Care Shock Diagnostic: Clinically Relevant Detection of Protease Activity in Whole Blood."

Lefkowitz was also among the inagural class of Sieble Scholars in the Department of Bioengineering at UC San Diego.

The other former grad student in the story is Gene Hsiao, who we wrote about for his work related to insulin resistance published in PNAS in 2009.

Raj Krishnan / Biological Dynamics in Voice of San Diego Feature Story

Our old friend Raj Krishnan is featured in a Voice of San Diego story about his quest to cure cancer via the startup company (Biological Dynamics) that grew out of his bioengineering PhD research here at the Jacobs School of Engineering. Read the VoSD story by Claire Trageser here.

Below is the video interview we did with Krishnan in December 2009.

Two Upcoming Alunni Events: Chuao Chocolate Making and a Night at Napa

Calling all UC San Diego alumni: check out these two upcoming alumni events.

September 22:  The Creative Process of Chocolate Making

Oct 2: A Night in Napa (includes GRAPE STOMPING and shuttle service from Oakland, San Jose and Sacremento!).

Hat Tip to Saura Naderi

UC San Diego alumna Saura Naderi wore a fantastic hat to the opening day for horse racing at Del Mar this week. But you don't have to take our word for it...Cindy McNatt from the Orange County Register captured it all...including Naderi's hat (see below)

Yuvraj Agarwal Photos

Photos below for the new story:
Enterprise PCs Work While They Sleep, Saving Energy and Money

Caption info for the graphs is available in the PDF of the SleepServer paper. The photo credit for any of the portraits of Yuvraj Agarwal is: UC San Diego / Erik Jepsen

Jeff Mounzer on KSDT in 15 minutes

Jacobs School alumnus (current PhD student at Stanford studying electrical engineering) and fabled TESC President Jeff Mounzer just stopped in my office...but just for a moment because he was off to be interviewed on the UCSD campus radio station:
http://scw.ucsd.edu/

Jeff Mounzer is going to be interviewed at 4 PM on Friday June 11 (15 minutes from now). Check it out at: http://scw.ucsd.edu/ and click on listen

Pulse / Jacobs School Alumni Magazine is Online!

The latest issue of Pulse, the Jacobs School alumni magazine is online. Check it out!

Junkyard Derby is Next Week! (400th blog post)

Junkyard Derby is a most worthy subject for my 400th post on this blog about all things Jacobs School.

The best way to get a taste of Junkyard Derby is to see it for yourself. You'll have to wait till next Friday, but in the meantime, there are a couple of options.

First option: Watch the video from last year's Junkyard Derby.



Second option: Check out the "Mad Dash for Trash" next Wednesday evening. That's the official beginning of Junkyard Derby. At the sound of the whistle, all the teams rush into a mountain of scavenged junk (abandoned furniture and old bikes are always popular). They grab the raw materials (aka Junk) that they will fashion into lean, mean, racing machines in the following 36 hours.

If I remember right, last year they even had folks out there with welding tools to help the teams transform junk into race cars.

Learn all about Junkyard Derby at the official TESC site:
http://tesc.ucsd.edu/derby/

UCSD Alumni Magazine is Online

The latest issue of the UCSD alumni magazine is now online. You can get the online/print hybrid experience at: http://www.pursuantmedia.com/ucsd/0110/

Or hit this page for the UCSD alumni magazine:

Page 25 includes a Q&A with engineering alum Matt Newsome.

Albert Lin, a Materials Science alumnus named an adventurer of the year

Jacobs School alumnus Albert Lin (Ph.D. 2008)is one of the world's top adventurers, according to National Geographic Adventure magazine. Below are a couple of paragraphs from the Calit2 story on the award.

It’s not often that a materials scientist by training gets to be labeled one of the world’s top adventurers. But that’s the honor bestowed on Calit2 research scholar Albert Yu-Min Lin, 28, in the December 2009-January 2010 issue of National Geographic Adventure magazine. Lin is affiliated with Calit2’s Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3).

Lin earned his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering in 2008. After graduation, “his mother, a former Hong Kong movie star, and his father, an astrophysicist, both urged him to get on with things as soon as possible, to find a job that would allow him to eat more steak, less ramen,” writes Luke Dittrich in the feature article, “Conjuring the Great Khan”, that is part of NG Adventure’s cover story. “Instead, Lin decided to begin his post-[doctoral] graduate career by organizing a high-risk, high-stakes project, one that offered little stability and even less promise of success.”

Read the full story on the Calit2 Web site.