YY Zhou / More Reliable Computing

Calit2's Tiffany Fox wrote a nice profile on Yuanyuan (YY) Zhou, a computer science professor here at the Jacobs School of Engineering.

“People always ask why their systems fail, and the computer industry is starting to pay attention to this reliability issue,” explains Zhou, who joined the UCSD Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) in the Jacobs School of Engineering in the summer of 2009. “Fundamentally, my research is about making computer systems less vulnerable to attacks so they crash less. When Windows crashes, it’s more of an inconvenience, but when an e-commerce site crashes it can really be a problem.”


Zhou is the first holder of the Qualcomm Endowed Chair in Mobile Computing. The chair is one of four established in the Jacobs School of Engineering through Qualcomm’s original $15 million commitment to the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). Read the story on the Calit2 news site.

Check out a few more great photos of computer sicnece professor YY Zhou taken by Erik Jepsen on the Calit2 Flickr site.

Working on the next issue of Pulse

We're hard at work on the Fall 2010 issue of Pulse, the alumni magazine from the Jacobs School of Engineering.

In the meantime, check out a few of my favorite stories for the last issue.

Selections from Research Expo 2010

Geckos of the Sea

San Diegans and their Cell Phones Monitor Air Pollution

The Pulse archive is here.

Engineering and Science of Surfboard Story in the San Diego Union Tribune

Congratulations to Benjamin Thompson and to the team of mechanical engineering undergraduates from UC San Diego who were featured in a story printed in today's San Diego Union Tribune.

Here is the online version of the Union Tribune science of surfing story by Lily Leung.  (Check out the videos here and here and the photos are on the Jacobs School Flickr account. the original Jacobs School surfing story is here.)

GreenDroid Chip Research in San Diego Union Tribune

The UC San Diego chip prototype that uses dark silicon to improve smartphone performance is highlighted in a San Diego Union Tribune story by Ashly McGlone.

Read the full UT story here. Read the related GreenDroid Jacobs School story here.

Check out the GreenDroid page run by the researchers in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at UC San Diego. The professors leading the research are Steven Swanson and Michael Taylor. This work was presented recently at the HotChips symposium in Palo Alto. Check out the Green Droid HotChips slides here (PDF).

Experimental Batteries in the Works / NanoEngineers in Action

A student assembles an experimental battery in the Department of NanoEngineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. The work is being done in the Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion run by NanoEngineering professor Shirley Meng.

Check out more photos from the Meng lab on the Jacobs School Flikr site.

Read the full story on the Jacobs School of Engineering news site.

How do Whales Hear?

UCSD structural engineering professor Petr Krysl has designed modern computational methods that give a 3D simulated look inside the head of a Cuvier’s beaked whale.

Researchers led by a UC San Diego structural engineering professor are working to understand the potential harmful effects of sound on marine mammals such as whales and dolphins.

The researchers led by Petr Kryls have developed a model that creates a 3-dimensional virtual environment in which they can simulate sounds propagated through the virtual specimen and reveal the interactions between the sound and the anatomy. By having a virtual “peek” inside the whale’s head, the scientists are able to better understand and see how sound may impact or potentially harm marine life. Read the full story by Andrea Siedsma on the Jacobs School site.

“Humans introduce considerable amounts of sound and noise into the oceans of the world,” Krysl said. “Many marine organisms make acute use of sound for their primary sensory modality because light penetrates so poorly into water. The primary focus of our work is Cuvier's beaked whale because some have stranded and died in the presence of Navy sonar. The discoveries we made with regard to the mechanisms of hearing in the beaked whale also apply to the bottlenose dolphin and, we suspect, to all types of toothed whales and perhaps other marine mammals.”

The work was recently published in the journal PLoS One: "A New Acoustic Portal into the Odontocete Ear and Vibrational Analysis of the Tympanoperiotic Complex"

UC San Diego Cut Electricty Purchases During Heat Wave Last Week

During Aug. 23-25 when California’s afternoon temperatures rose above 100 degrees, UC San Diego took a variety of energy-conservation steps, including simultaneously adjusting thousands of thermostats a few degrees warmer than normal to help cut electricity purchases up to 80 percent during three state-wide “demand response” events.

UC San Diego faculty and staff switched from desktop computers to more energy-efficient laptops and turned off printers and other office equipment not in use and took many other measures as part of an effort to restrain electricity consumption. As a result, UC San Diego reduced its purchase of electricity from 10.5 megawatts to only 2 megawatts during a critical two-hour period on Aug. 25 and reduced electricity purchases by similar amounts during the two previous afternoons.

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