Bridge Columns To Be Tested on Jacobs School Shake Table

A 24-foot tall bridge column will undergo a series of simulated earthquake tests up to a 7.0 magnitude, conducted by UC San Diego structural engineers, beginning on Sept. 20. The bridge column is modeled after those designed by CALTRANS over the last 15 years. It will be the first time engineers will test a full scale bridge column of this kind on an earthquake simulator.  The engineers will test the seismic vulnerability of these bridge columns and to provide additional data for improving future designs.

Check out the live cam: http://nees.ucsd.edu/video/

Electrical Engineering (ECE) News and Events

For the latest news, events and goings on from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), check out the ECE home page: http://www.ece.ucsd.edu/

UC San Diego Engineering mentioned in Union Tribune look-back story on 9-11-2001

The San Diego Union Tribune story, "How the 9/11 attacks changed life in San Diego: Aftereffects of terrorist attacks include longer waits at the border, tighter security for travelers and military growth" mentions research being done here at the Jacobs School of Engineering.

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).