Alumni Magazine online

The latest issue of Pulse, the alumni magazine of the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering made is now online .

The issue is dedicated to highlighting some of the ways researchers at the Jacobs School are tackling the "grand challenges for engineering" set forth earlier this year by the National Academy of Engineering.

The Jacobs School communications team began with a blog that serves to collect the ways the Jacobs School and UC San Diego are working on the NAE's Grand Challenges. This issue of Pulse is a further refinement on the theme.

What is especially nice is that Jacobs School professors were addressing these challenges long before they were officially described by the NAE.

NanoEngineering / Structural Engineering Groundbreaking

Pretty much everything is better when you involve a home-made robot...and groundbreaking ceremonies at university engineering schools are no exception. Check out the robot-version of UC San Diego's informal mascot doing the heavy lifting at the groundbreaking for the Structural and Materials Engineering Building. The building will be the home of two Jacobs School of Engineering departments—Structural Engineering and NanoEngineering—and provide studios and additional facilities for UC San Diego’s Department of Visual Arts.

Field Medic on a Chip hits Technology Review

Joseph Wang, a nanoengineering professor from the Jacobs School, recently won a $1.6M grant from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) for a technology described as a "field hospital on a chip."

Technology Review journalist Lauren Gravitz covered the story. Check it out here.

Clean Tech Awards Ceremony

Last night was clean-tech night in San Diego. The Jacobs School's von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurship put on a great event to honor the three local clean tech research projects that are receiving seed funding from the Clean Tech Innovation Challenge--a partnership between the City of San Diego, UC San Diego’s William J. von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism and San Diego State University (SDSU).

The program is designed to accelerate the commercialization of clean technologies out of university labs as part of the city’s goal to promote the growth of the local clean tech industry. Program participants include faculty from UC San Diego, SDSU, University of San Diego and Alliant International University. Qualcomm, Inc. co-sponsored the first grant awards.

In the photo at the top of the blog post (left to right): Frieder Seible Dean of the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering; San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders; and Terry Moore, Executive Director, Morrison & Foerster Venture Network. (Morrison & Foerster sponsored the party...thanks!)

Two of the three university-based clean tech research projects that are receiving Innovation Challenge funding are from UC San Diego:

Paul Yu, Electrical and Computer Engineering professor, UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering
project: Multiple Quantum Wells for Solar Spectral Concentrator and Optical Energy Transport Technology

Yu Qiao, Structural Engineering professor, UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering:
project: Developing Ultrahigh-Efficiency Thermal-Energy Harvesting Materials

John J. Love, Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, San Diego State University

The Clock that Breeds

Bioengineering professor Jeff Hasty recently published a Nature paper describing the first fast, robust genetic clock that works inside living E. coli cells.

Carl Zimmer wrote a nice piece of this research advance for Discover Magazine.

Technology Review's Emily Singer also covered this Nature paper here.

San Diego Wireless History

Going through piles of paper on my desk just now, I uncovered this great story from the Union Tribune from January 2008 by Jonathan Sidener and Kathryn Balint entitled,

Well-connected from the start

San Diego's bustling wireless industry can trace its roots to one local company

It's a great read.

BTW, Balint is no longer at the San Diego Union Tribune. According to her LinkedIn profile, she is President and CEO of CropMom Corporation, a digital scrapbooking site.

Bad Times a Good Time for Tech?

Microsoft's Craig Mundie visited UC San Diego on Friday Oct 10, in order to connect with Jacobs School students and faculty as well as univeristy administrators.

After Mundie's tech demo, he sat down with Alex Pham from the Los Angeles Times, which resulted in a Q&A. Read the full Q&A here. The final question is below.

Do you see a problem with the quality of American computer science graduates?

It is a serious problem, especially in the U.S. For us, our raw materials are smart people. Our culture for the last few decades does little to celebrate engineers and scientists and a lot to celebrate entertainers and athletes.

Parents in the U.S. also are just more decoupled from the academic interests of their kids. They are less demanding of their kids academically and perhaps even encouraging their kids into whatever the parents see as the quickest way to make a lot of money. Taken together, that is creating a somewhat acute shortage of American kids growing up with any passion for math and science.

There is a silver lining in this economic turmoil. Perhaps fewer of our best students will now go to Wall Street. Maybe some will even stay and build things. We need smart people to tackle the hard, long-term problems society faces. It can't be done by politicians and entertainers. It's going to be done by engineers and scientists.