The Jacobs School was THIS close!!!

We were THIS close to grabbing some prize money in the 2nd Annual UCSD $50K Entrepreneurship Competition.

Bioengineers working on better multidrug combinations and electrical engineers working toward solar-powered personal electronics were the two Jacobs School finalists in the business plan competition that was held at Calit2’s Atkinson Hall on Saturday May 31 from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm.

But alas, the three other finalists placed above our finalists.

It's all good though. Before the competition, both teams told me that even if they didn't win any money, just getting to the finals was a big success because it forced them to fully think through their business plans. They also had the benefit of meeting with lots of seasoned entrepreneurs and venture capital folks.

Read all about the two great Jacobs School finalists here.

Junkyard Derby

It always amazes me how creative some of the Junkyard Derby cars are. Check out the wrap up story here, and the preview story here, and the great video news coverage from Channel 10. Thanks to UCSD alum Ray Schumacher for the chicken-car photo above.

When you watch the video, check out the super cool Packman-themed car!

Nanowires as electron super highways

Just off an asphalt superhighway (the 5), engineers developed experimental solar cells with superhighways for electrons. Once the electrons hop on the superhighway, they go directly to the electrode. Why do we care if electrons make it to the electrode? Because if they don't make it, then no current is produced. And for many thin-film solar cells made of polymers, electrons have a hard time making to the electrode. Before they get there, they often recombine with a hole.

You can read the full press release here.

You can read the NanoLetters paper here (PDF).

If you are wondering about a caption for the image above, read below:

Schematic of the nanowire-polymer hybrid device created by UC San Diego engineers and described in the journal NanoLetters. (Top to bottom): top yellow layer is the gold (Au) electrode that attracts the holes; blue gradient is the polymer material (P3HT) that absorbs the sunlight; the yellow wires are the InP nanowires that grow directly on the green metal substrate made of indium tin oxide (ITO).

Space is the Current Frontier

In the process of interviewing Bhaskar Rao, the electrical engineer just named named the inaugural holder of the Ericsson Endowed Chair in Wireless Access Networks in the Jacobs School, I learned that in the world of wireless networks, space is the new fronteir.

It's not about going into outerspace with your shiny new PDA. It's about using space as well as time to send information across wireless networks. To enter the wireless world's space dimension, you need to be working with at least two antennae at both the sending and receiving end. Welcome to MIMO: multiple inputs multiple outputs.

When you have mutliple transmitters and recievers, signal processing gets more complicated because you are manipulating space and not just time.

This is super cool because when you're dealing with just one antenna on the transmitter side and one antenna on the receiver side, it is very hard to inrease the data rate. To double the data rate, you have to increase the power of the signal by a factor of 100. That's a lot of work just to double the data rate.

But when you start working with two antennae on both the transmitting and receiving end, the rules change. You can increase data rate without having to raise the power of the signal you are sending or having to increase your bandwidth usage.

The WiMax wireless networks you might have heard about are incorporating MIMO technologies. MIMO is on its way.

For MIMO technologies to function well, the reciever and transmitter have to keep up a regular conversation in which the receiver says, "Hey transmitter! Listen up, this is what I think you said." And based on that information, the transmitter can do a better job of getting its message across the wireless channel to the receiver.

This is called "learning the wireless channel."

Some of Bhaskar Rao's recent work has been in the feedback that the receiver sends the transmitter. You want to be able to send all the relevant information, but nothing more. Also, the wireless channel can change at anytime, so the receiver has to keep sending information to the transmitter.

Who knows when exactly, but pretty soon our laptops and other electronics will have multiple wireless antennae using MIMO to carry data wirelessly at blazing fast speeds. Stay tuned. Space is the current frontier.

You can read more about Bhaskar Rao here.

Here is a link to his laboratory Web page.

Environmental Monitoring Team Engineering Project is Complete!

Jacobs School students are working on many different team engineering projects for nonprofit community clients in San Diego. One project that recently wrapped up is a solar powered environmental monitoring system. It floats in a reclaimed water body (is it a pond or a lake or a wetland? any thoughts?) that is part of Lakeside's River Park Conservancy's project to restore the San Diego River. The floating solar panel contraption in the photo above the monitor. It has sensors down in the water that collects all kinds of information. This info gets sent wirelessly to a the conservancy's computer system on dry land, where staff and volunteers can monitor the quality of the water as time goes on.

You can check out the student's final presentation here (it's a PPT file).

You can check out their Web site here.

This is part of TIES (Teams in Engineering Service) program in which undergrads work together on real projects. It's great experience. It's good for the community. It's service learning. And it can help you snag a job. I ran into one of the TIES members at the big undergrad job fair here at the Jacobs School (DECaF). He'd just had an interview with an environmental monitoring company that was interested in him, especially because of his real-world experience with the TIES environmental monitoring program.

InP Nanowire / Polymer Hybrid Photodiode

I'm working on a press release for a recent NanoLetters paper from electrical engineers here at the Jacobs School. They created a photodiode (think photovoltaic) in which nanowires grown directly on a metal are submerged by a conducting polymer. When light hits the polymer, electrons and holes are split. The electrons make their way to the nanowires, and the nanowires shuttle the electrons down to the electrode. This design is more efficient than polymer photodiodes that don't contain nanowires.

More soon.

Undergrads Publishing in Genome Research

Liz Kain and Ian Kerman are two of the UCSD undergrads from the bioinformatics program who have a paper accepted in Genome Research. The paper is embargoed and I'm working on a press release now, but if you want the inside scoop, contact me. It's a hot paper and a great example of undergrads doing cutting edge research along side world-renowned professors and top-notch grad students.