Engineering Bear Gets a Scarf

The rock sculpture of the bear in the engineering courtyard got a hand-knitted scarf this morning, thanks to a dedicated and talented group of UC San Diego friends and supporters.

I don't have all the details of how this came about, but the photos speak for themselves. This is part of UC San Diego's 50th birthday party.  Check out more photos on UCSD Bear's Facebook page:

The official name of the bear is "Bear."  Read more about this Tim Hawkinson sculpture on the Stuart Collection website.

For Students Only: Free Thanksgiving Weekend Shuttle from UC San Diego to San Airport

UC San Diego FREE holiday shuttle for students
http://yamhill.ucsd.edu/tps/shuttles/

More holiday shuttle info:
http://yamhill.ucsd.edu/tps/shuttles/Information.aspx

Scenes from a NanoEngineering Lab: (Part 3)

Here is the third post on chemical engineering major Maria Zimmerman, who is an undergraduate student researcher in a nanomachine-focused lab run by NanoEngineering professor Joseph Wang.

In a previous post, Maria said that she got her foot in the Wang lab door through a fellowship, and stayed because she loved it. It was a fellowship for the UC San Diego California Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (CAMP) in Science, Engineering and Mathematics program.

In the first post and second post, Maria in photographed in the lab and gives a bit of advice to undergrads thinking about trying their (gloved) hands at research:

Maria said: "Ask for responsibility. The work only gets interesting if they trust you want to do it. You are just wasting your time if you go in to clean pipette tips."

But what does Maria actually do in the lab?

"I work in the nanomotors section of Dr Wang's research lab. My recent work has been on nanomotor controlled in vitro drug delivery. We are able to manually control the nanomotors ability to pick up, transport, and drop off cancer drug carrying microparticles. We are striving towards a realistic model for in vivo applications," said Maria Zimmerman. 

von Liebig Center helps San Diego Win $1M Clean Tech Grant

A quote from the KPBS story by Padma Nagappan:

“The focus of the grant is on energy technologies. For example, next generation batteries, new materials for cheaper solar panels or new ways for generating hydrogen,” said Rosibel Ochoa, the UCSD grant coordinator. (Ochoa is the executive director of the William J. von Liebig Center at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering).

HKN: Food Fun Photos

A few photos from a food-meets-engineering event last week put on by the Jacobs School's HKN Chapter. HKN (Eta Kappa Nu) is the Electrical and Computer Engineering honor society. Students built structures out of food (check out the creme-brule-inspired touch below). HKN has a "How to Build a Computer" workshop tomorrow evening.

Thanks to HKN's Craig Calkins for the photos.

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.

"They said it sounded like we were building dinosaurs," he [Raj Krishnan] said.

Bioengineering alumnus (Ph.D. '09) Raj Krishnan talks about naming his cancer diagnostics startup in the latest in a series of Voice of San Diego profiles by Claire Trageser.

An out of context snippet from the story:

But that wasn't enough to dissuade Krishnan, who was then a graduate student at University of California, San Diego. So he took the name to a group of business students and asked their opinion.

"They said it sounded like we were building dinosaurs," he said.

Read the full story on the Voice of San Diego site.