Thursday, July 2, 2009

Phased Array Fantastic


Gabriel Rebeiz, an electrical engineering professor, released a joint UC San Diego / Jazz Semiconductor press release today.



“UCSD believes that the quad-beam phased array receiver will enable
high-performance phased arrays for satellite communications by integrating many
functions on the same silicon chip and replacing several GaAs ICs, drastically
lowering the cost of phased array assembly,” said Dr. Gabriel M. Rebeiz,
Professor of Electrical Engineering at UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of
Engineering, a co-developer of this chip.


Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Biological Dynamics Stands Tall

Raj Krishnan and the UC San Diego student-run bioengineering startup company Biological Dynamics did not win the $250,000 first place at the DFJ Cisco Global Business Plan Competition. (Click here for background.)

Krishnan remains upbeat and optimistic. “We aren’t done yet, not by a long shot.”

First prize went to Husk Power Systems Inc., a company that turns rice husks into energy. The company is already powering a small town in India. Read a quick summary on the Wall Street Journal’s Venture Capital Dispatch blog.

“The competition was world-class and the process was extremely useful and exciting. Just making the finals is a great honor,” said Krishnan, whose team swept student research and business plan competitions across UC San Diego, the UC System and the region.

According to the story on Venture Capital Dispatch, posted by Timothy Hay, 15 executives from both Cisco and DFJ helped narrow the field of 16 finalists.

Draper said he has plans to follow up with seven of the start-ups he came across.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we funded four of them,” said Draper, DFJ founder.

“We learned a lot, and got to see the best of the best presentations worldwide. We will apply our knowledge to further improve our presentation for the upcoming $250K first prize Qualcomm QPrize competition, which we hope to win.”

The finals for the Qualcomm QPrize will be held in November 2009 here in San Diego.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Good Luck Raj Krishnan! ...break a leg...errr...pipette!


Xconomy San Diego highlighted just how big of a day it is for Raj Krishnan and the rest of the UC San Diego startup, Biological Dynamics. They aim to provide better early diagnosis tools for cancer. Today, Krishnan competes for $250,000 in the DFJ Cisco Global Business Plan Competition.


Concealed Weapons Story in Semiconductor Today



Gabriel Rebeiz and Jason May are electrical engineers from the University of California, San Diego who have invented radio frequency integrated circuits that could lead to significantly less expensive imaging systems for identifying concealed weapons, for helping helicopters to land during dust storms, and for high frequency data communications. The UC San Diego engineers presented this circuit at the 2009 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) Symposium on June 9, where it won one of the best three-student-paper awards.

On June 29, Semiconductor Today magazine ran a story on the millimeter wave imaging advance.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Big Nano in San Diego Business Journal


NanoEngineering by definition works at a very small scale. But this small-scale work is an increasingly big deal. Heather Chambers has a nice wrap up of some of the local big work in NanoEngineering and Nano-science in a recent story in the San Diego Business Journal.

The story is: Cutting-Edge Nanotech Devices Could Fight Disease From Inside the Body. (A short excerpt mentioning the Jacobs School's Joseph Wang from the NanoEngineering Department is below:

Another local UCSD researcher, nanoengineering professor Joseph Wang, said he envisions a system where the body’s glucose levels would automatically trigger nanodevices capable of administering insulin.

Toxicity still presents challenges, he said, although he envisions “many exciting opportunities and applications which are limited only by our imagination.”

Friday, June 26, 2009

Trey Ideker in Washington Post


Bioengineering professor Trey Ideker's recent work on antioxidants and longevity is featured in a Washington Post column by Jennifer LaRue Huget.

Trey Ideker, who holds posts in the schools of medicine and engineering at the University of California at San Diego, has found in laboratory tests that some limited exposure to oxidants may equip cells to better withstand larger exposures. His work, if borne out in humans, could have all kinds of implications for our understanding of aging and disease.
Read the original press release, by Debra Kain, here.

Music Search Engine Link List

Gert Lanckriet and Luke Barrington recently asked for a list of links to the various media outlets that have covered their work to build a music search engine that only requres users to type in descriptive words.

Below is a subset of the 2009 media clips, including a smattering of blogs.

2009

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/22894/

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2009/04/16/science/952blackbox041509.txt

http://www.sandiego6.com/mediacenter/local.aspx?videoid=606084@xetv.dayport.com&navCatId=5

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2009/2552119.htm

http://www.ucsdguardian.org/focus/this-song-is-so-doing-the-dishes-1.1743724

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Music-Thats-Made-for-You-.html


2009 blogs

http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=1547

http://www.acedmagazine.com/feature-articles-mainmenu-34/87-technology/3306-organic-musical-classifications-by-ai-algorithm

http://www.trunkneck.com/2009/06/06/facebook-games-for-a-better-music-search-engine/

http://www.brianmay.com/queen/queennews/queennewsmay09.html

http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20090614/854/ttc-engineers-design-facebook-games-to-i.html

http://www2.computer.org/portal/web/news/home/-/blogs/herd-it-facebook-app-leverages-crowd-participation-to-help-computers-learn-songs

http://www.laptoprockers.eu/technology/p1/facebook-game-herd-it-helps-to-build-new-music-search-engine/

http://story.northkoreatimes.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/dd8845aa60952db2/id/508811/cs/1/

http://beatcrave.com/2009-05-21/new-music-search-engine-queen-and-led-zeppelin-segmented/