The Jacobs School's in the Spotlight

The shake table at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego and PIs Tara Hutchinson, Jose Restrepo and Joel Conte were featured on all three major networks' nightly news April 17. Here are the stories:

NBC Nightly News

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

CBS Evening News

ABC World News

Additional media hits include:
USA Today

BBC News

The New York Times

Bloomberg BusinessWeek

Popular Mechanics 

Huffington Post

Daily Mail, U.K.

Engineers Put Five-story Buildling on Shake Table to Test for Earthquake and Fire Readiness

What happens when you put a fully equipped five-story building, which includes an intensive care unit, a surgery suite, piping and air conditioning, fire barriers and even a working elevator, through a series of high-intensity earthquakes?

Structural engineers at the University of California, San Diego are about to find out during a two-week series of tests conducted on the world’s largest outdoor shake table at the Englekirk Structural Engineering Center. The overarching goal of the $5 million project, which is supported by a coalition of government agencies, foundations and industry partners, is to ascertain what needs to be done to make sure that high-value buildings, such as hospitals and data centers, remain operational after going through an earthquake. Researchers also will assess whether the building’s fire barriers have been affected by the shakes.

More here

Shu Chien Honored by Columbia University

Bioengineering professor Shu Chien is being honored by Columbia University with an honorary Doctor of Science.

Columbia University will confer the honorary degree at commencement exercises on Wednesday, May 16. Chien is University Professor of bioengineering and medicine at UC San Diego and Director of the UC San Diego Institute of Engineering in Medicine.

From the Columbia University press release:

Shu Chien, Doctor of Science: As a doctor, researcher and professor, Chien has made seminal contributions to fields of biology, medicine and engineering. His primary areas of research are cardiovascular physiology, molecular and cellular bioengineering, and stem cell regulation. He is the author of more than 500 peer-reviewed scientific articles and editor of 11 books. He has been a leader of numerous professional societies and the recipient of countless awards, including the National Medal of Science, which he received from President Obama in 2011.

Learn more about Chien's research in this Jacobs School of Engineering story celebrating his National Medal of Science.

In San Diego on April 13? Shu Chien is giving the Richard Skalak Memorial Lecture today, April 13 from 4-6 p.m. at the Calit2 Atkinson Hall. Register here

Junkyard Derby 2011 Videos

Thanks to recent Jacobs School alumnus Wiseley Wu for sending the link to the Junkyard Derby 2011 YouTube playlist.

Be sure to check out the time lapse of the build process (second video...first is the playlist w/ all the videos).

Nanoengineer Liangfang Zhang wins American Chemical Society's Unilever Award for 2012

The American Chemical Society has awarded Lianfang Zhang, professor in the Department of NanoEngineering, the ACS Colloid and Surface Division Unilever Award for 2012. This award was established in 2004 to recognize work in the field of colloid or surfactant science by North American researchers in the early stages of their careers. The award recognizes Zhang’s research on biomimetic nanomaterials that integrate synthetic colloids with natural cellular membrane materials, and biologically responsive nanostructures for drug delivery.

For example, Zhang’s lab has shown that nanoparticles stuffed with a cocktail of cancer-fighting drugs can be hidden from the body’s immune system by simply wrapping them in the membrane of a red blood cell. His red blood cell membrane cloaked nanoparticles were featured in a front-page story by UT San Diego last November and in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Nanoparticles are less than 100 nanometers in size, about the same size as a virus. “This is the first work that combines the natural cell membrane with a synthetic nanoparticle for drug delivery applications.” said Zhang, who is also affiliated with Moores UCSD Cancer Center.

Zhang is also working on biologically responsive nanostructures that offer a new way to deliver antimicrobial agents directly to the site of bacterial infections such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Zhang’s team use phospholipid liposomes to deliver the antibiotics. But liposomes by themselves wouldn’t last long enough to deliver an effective treatment so Zhang has stabilized them with chitosan-coated gold nanoparticles.

You can learn more about the Zhang Research Group’s gold nanoparticle-stabilized liposomes for bacterial skin infections at the April 12 Research Expo 2012 when Soracha Thamphiwatana, a nanoengineering graduate student in Zhang’s lab, will present a poster on this research, which was published last year in Chemical & Engineering News.

The Unilever Award is one of the most competitive and prestigious national awards offered by the ACS Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry. Zhang will receive the award this summer during the 86^th ACS Colloids and Surface Science Symposium in Baltimore June 12.

Top Five Reasons to Attend Research Expo at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering

5. What happens at Research Expo DOES NOT stay at Research Expo! Meet the innovators who will shape tomorrow’s technologies, advances and industries.

4. Fast-Paced Faculty Talks: Hot topics from all six engineering departments at the Jacobs School.

3. Stretch your Mind…and your Legs. Get out of the office for just a couple of hours and learn what is at the leading edge of many engineering fields.

2. Explore your World-Class Engineering Resource. The Jacobs School of Engineering is one of the top 10 schools in the world. Make the most of this resource.

1. Connect with 230+ Graduate Students. At the poster session and networking reception, spark a collaboration and recruit top talent.

Research Expo at the Jacobs School of Engineering
When: Thursday, April 12 from 1:30-6:00 p.m.
Where: UC San Diego Price Center
Register: http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/re/

Attend Research Expo. Your brain will thank you.

Faculty researchers share their experiences turning discoveries into marketable products

Four engineering faculty members with technology transfer success stories discussed the challenges of the commercialization process during a March 14 dinner celebrating the 10^th anniversary of the von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism and Technology Advancement. The von Liebig Center offers seed funding and advisory services and is part of the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego.

“If we do research and just put it on the shelf to collect dust, we’re not doing our job,” said Frieder Seible, dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering. “We need to transfer our discoveries from the research lab to society.” During the dinner, which was hosted by the UC San Diego Chancellor’s Associates, Seible said the von Liebig Center had transformed the culture of the engineering school, giving students and faculty an entrepreneurial mindset. The Chancellor’s Associates are generous group of alumni, parents and friends who give $2,500 or more each year to be used at the Chancellor's discretion to fund the university's greatest needs.

Stephen Flaim, who is deputy director of the center and one of its several technology and business advisors, talked about the so-called Valley of Death, a gap between the laboratory and the marketplace that can fell even the most promising technology. Lacking funding and a connection with private sector investors and collaborators, researchers can easily get stuck. “There is a gap before the gap,” said Flaim. “That gap is the step from the university out to the private sector. What we did here at the von Liebig Center was figure out a mechanism and an infrastructure that allowed us to make the technologies inside a university recognizable at an earlier stage.”

Read our story about the success stories of UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering professors David Kriegman, computer science and engineering; Rene Cruz, electrical and computer engineering; Sujit Dey, electrical and computer engineering; and Geert Schmid-Schönbein, bioengineering. You can learn more about the cutting edge student research happening in faculty labs, including those of Schmid-Schönbein, Dey and Cruz at Research Expo April 12. Here's a snapshot of what their students will be presenting during the poster session:

TRYPSIN AND MMP-9 LEVELS INCREASE IN PLASMA AND LUNG AFTER HEMORRHAGIC SHOCK: POTENTIAL MECHANISM FOR MEMBRANE RECEPTOR DAMAGE
Student(s): Angelina Esther Altshuler
Professor(s): Geert Schmid-Schönbein

QUERY-BASED MODELS AND ALGORITHMS FOR DISTRIBUTED INFORMATION DISSEMINATION
Student(s): Efecan Poyraz
Professor(s): Rene L. Cruz

ADAPTATION OF VIDEO ENCODING TO ADDRESS DYNAMIC THERMAL MANAGEMENT EFFECTS
Student(s): Seyed Ali Mirtar
Professor(s): Sujit Dey

DYNAMIC BASE STATION RECONFIGURATION FOR BATTERY EFFICIENT VIDEO DOWNLOAD
Student(s): Ranjini B Guruprasad
Professor(s): Sujit Dey

MODELING, CHARACTERIZING, AND ENHANCING USER EXPERIENCE IN CLOUD MOBILE RENDERING
Student(s): Yao Liu
Professor(s): Sujit Dey

USER INTEREST ESTIMATION BASED ON VIDEO WEBPAGE CLASSIFICATION
Student(s): Chetan Kumar Verma
Professor(s): Sujit Dey

VIDEO CACHING IN THE WIRELESS CLOUD: ALGORITHMS AND IMPACT ON DELAY AND CAPACITY
Student(s): Hasti Ahlehagh
Professor(s): Sujit Dey