Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Bioengineering Undergrad Wins Library Award
Sara Richardson, a bioengineering undergraduate at the Jacobs School of Engineering is one of four undergraduate students at UC San Diego to received a 2009 Undergraduate Library Research Prize for their exemplary research skills.
Sara Richardson won first place in the life and physical sciences category, an award which comes with a $1000 cash award.
Richardson received first prize for her work on “Simulation of EVA Suite Effects During Lunar and Martian Analog Exercise.” Richardson’s research explored the effects of lower body negative pressure versus lower body positive pressure as a way to simulate human exercise on the moon. She was nominated by her faculty advisor Alan Hargens, a professor of orthopedic surgery at the UCSD School of Medicine. She completed her research at the Clinical Orthopedic Lab at the UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest.
"The research resources available from the UC San Diego Libraries have been extremely valuable in my project," said Richardson. “I have made extensive use of the UCSD Library resources listed in Sage and the E-journal subscriptions, which were necessary to view the results of my searches on PubMed and have been essential to my ability to access relevant papers. The research strategies I have picked up in this project have carried over into other aspects of my academic life—both for class and research."
Richardson is extremely involved at UC San Diego outside the library as well. She is the past president of the Jacobs School of Engineering's Triton Engineering Student Council (TESC).
Watch Richardson on YouTube (below) giving a tour of E-Games 2008.
Sara Richardson won first place in the life and physical sciences category, an award which comes with a $1000 cash award.
Richardson received first prize for her work on “Simulation of EVA Suite Effects During Lunar and Martian Analog Exercise.” Richardson’s research explored the effects of lower body negative pressure versus lower body positive pressure as a way to simulate human exercise on the moon. She was nominated by her faculty advisor Alan Hargens, a professor of orthopedic surgery at the UCSD School of Medicine. She completed her research at the Clinical Orthopedic Lab at the UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest.
"The research resources available from the UC San Diego Libraries have been extremely valuable in my project," said Richardson. “I have made extensive use of the UCSD Library resources listed in Sage and the E-journal subscriptions, which were necessary to view the results of my searches on PubMed and have been essential to my ability to access relevant papers. The research strategies I have picked up in this project have carried over into other aspects of my academic life—both for class and research."
Richardson is extremely involved at UC San Diego outside the library as well. She is the past president of the Jacobs School of Engineering's Triton Engineering Student Council (TESC).
Watch Richardson on YouTube (below) giving a tour of E-Games 2008.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Cybersecurity researcher / computer science professor profiled in Voice of San Diego
Computer science professor Stefan Savage is profiled today in the Voice of San Diego. The story by David Washburn highlights the systems security research lead by Savage and fellow Jacobs School computer science professor Geoff Voelker.
From the Voice of San Diego story:
Long considered a top cyber-security expert, Savage leads a team at the Collaborative Center for Internet Epidemiology and Defenses that last year infiltrated the infamous Storm botnet, which victimized millions of people through internet spam scams. And last month the center, which is a joint UCSD and UC-Berkeley effort, was awarded a five-year, $7 million grant from the U.S. Navy's research arm to study botnets and the threats they pose to national security.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Herd It leaps out of Alfpha Mode
Herd It, the music discovery Facebook game created by Jacobs School engineers just moved from alpha to full production mode. Herd It was created by the same group of researchers who are developing a new kind of music search engine that is capable of actually listening to songs and returning songs that contain the musical characteristics that person is looking for--based on their text-based search strings--moved from alpha to offical release mode today.
David Washburn from the Voice of San Diego wrote about Herd It this spring, and Washburn just blogged about the latest from Herd It at The Venture (which is Washburn's Voice of San Deigo blog).
Screen shots I posted on the Jacobs School blog last spring are here.
With Stiff Gel, Get From Adult Stem Cells to Muscle Cells
Stiff gels are important for coaxing adult stem cells to differentiate into muscle cells. Making muscle cells from adult stem cells in the lab would provide important new sources of high quality cells for a wide range of cell-based regenerative therapies to treat a diverse set of muscle diseases, from muscular dystrophy to heart attacks.
Adam Engler, a bioengineering professor at UC San Diego, is using stiff gels as part of his work to create more realistic stem cell niches that will provide the right cues (in both time and space) for adult stem cells to turn to muscle cells.
This week, Engler received a $1.5 million grant from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop these stem cell niches over the next five years.
The images above highlight the progress Engler has already made. Both images above are adult mesenchymal stem cells (or MSCs). The adult stem cells on the left were grown on gels with stiffness of 1kPa (i.e. soft). The same type of stem cells (right) were grown on intermediately stiff gels (11kPa). The 11kPa gel recapitulates muscle stiffness, hence the adult mesenchymal stem cells on the right expressed MyoD, the protein labeled in the green color. MyoD plays a key role in regulating muscle differentiation. The 1kPa gel (left) is too soft, so those cells do not make the MyoD protein and most but not all lack green staining. The new project, funded by Adam Engler’s five-year $1.5 million NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, will integrate the cue of matrix stiffness with matrix topography and growth factors in a time and spatially-dependent way in order to make a more complete stem cell niche.
Learn about all the NIH New Innovator Award Recipients for 2009 here.
The images above highlight the progress Engler has already made. Both images above are adult mesenchymal stem cells (or MSCs). The adult stem cells on the left were grown on gels with stiffness of 1kPa (i.e. soft). The same type of stem cells (right) were grown on intermediately stiff gels (11kPa). The 11kPa gel recapitulates muscle stiffness, hence the adult mesenchymal stem cells on the right expressed MyoD, the protein labeled in the green color. MyoD plays a key role in regulating muscle differentiation. The 1kPa gel (left) is too soft, so those cells do not make the MyoD protein and most but not all lack green staining. The new project, funded by Adam Engler’s five-year $1.5 million NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, will integrate the cue of matrix stiffness with matrix topography and growth factors in a time and spatially-dependent way in order to make a more complete stem cell niche.
Learn about all the NIH New Innovator Award Recipients for 2009 here.
Scott LaFee mentioned Adam Engler in a San Diego Union Tribune story about other recent NIH grants to UC San Diego and the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Netflix Prize Organizers Turned to Computer Science Professor at UC San Diego
Charles Elkan is a data mining expert, a computer science professor at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego, and a consultant/judge for the Netflix Prize. The $1 million prize went today to BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos.
Professor Elkan attended the prize ceremony in his capactiy as a judge for the competition. Below are a few insights from Elkan regarding the winning team's approach to movie recommendations. A short news story about Elkan's participation in the Netflix Prize is on the news section of the Jacobs School of Engineering news site.
"The success of the winning team [BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos] is based on groundbreaking basic research stimulated by the contest. One important idea is to use hundreds of variations of multiple methods, and then to take a sophisticated average of their predictions. This way, the errors of the different methods can partially cancel out. A second important idea is to discover from the data factors that are relevant both in describing movies and in determining the preferences of viewers. These factors are mined from the data to be maximally predictive, as opposed to being programmed in by human experts. It turns out that mined factors are more useful than any human intuitions for this task. A third important idea is to model the subtle ways in which ratings from users change both day to day and over the long term," said Charles Elkan, computer science professor from the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering
Journalists: Charles Elkan is available for comment regarding the Netflix Prize. He can provide clear insights and explanations regarding the winning strategies and how this work ties into larger data mining trends in both business and academia. Contact me (dbkane AT ucsd DOT edt) and I'll put you in touch with professor Charles Elkan.
Professor Elkan attended the prize ceremony in his capactiy as a judge for the competition. Below are a few insights from Elkan regarding the winning team's approach to movie recommendations. A short news story about Elkan's participation in the Netflix Prize is on the news section of the Jacobs School of Engineering news site.
"The success of the winning team [BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos] is based on groundbreaking basic research stimulated by the contest. One important idea is to use hundreds of variations of multiple methods, and then to take a sophisticated average of their predictions. This way, the errors of the different methods can partially cancel out. A second important idea is to discover from the data factors that are relevant both in describing movies and in determining the preferences of viewers. These factors are mined from the data to be maximally predictive, as opposed to being programmed in by human experts. It turns out that mined factors are more useful than any human intuitions for this task. A third important idea is to model the subtle ways in which ratings from users change both day to day and over the long term," said Charles Elkan, computer science professor from the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering
Journalists: Charles Elkan is available for comment regarding the Netflix Prize. He can provide clear insights and explanations regarding the winning strategies and how this work ties into larger data mining trends in both business and academia. Contact me (dbkane AT ucsd DOT edt) and I'll put you in touch with professor Charles Elkan.
The official Netflix press release is here.
Insightful story from Communications of the ACM by Marina Krakovsky. This story quotes Charles Elkan.
The Wall Street Journal story by Marisa Taylor mentions Charles Elkan as a judge.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
UC San Diego as Energy Innovator: Profile in Union Tribune
Onell R. Soto, a journalist with the San Diego Union Tribune, wrote about some of the ways UCSD is becoming a national leader in energy innovation. Excerpt below.
While the solar panels on the roof are good, they're not enough, says
Washom, the university's director of strategic energy initiatives.
He's part of UCSD's effort to become a national model for finding, testing and
implementing new power technologies by having the people who run its facilities
working together with the scientists on the cutting edge.
“It's not enough anymore to install solar panels, change lightbulbs or recycle,” said Jan Kleissl, an assistant professor of engineering.
The university “is moving from today's version of sustainability and changing to tomorrow's version,” said Steve Relyea, vice chancellor of business affairs.
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