UCSD Entrepreneur Challenge / 2011 Spring Kickoff / March 30

UC San Diego Entrepreneur Challenge
SPRING KICKOFF
Wednesday March 30th, 6-8pm
UCSD Price Center - Ballroom A (map)
$17,500 in cash and prizes will be awarded
Keynote Speaker: Jordan Greenhall, Founder and Chairman of DivX, Inc.

RSVP

One of the world’s most accomplished mathematicians coming to campus

When László Lovász, Ph.D., -- considered one of the world’s most accomplished mathematicians -- speaks at UC San Diego on April 5, about 300 high school students, many from underrepresented areas of the county, will be part of the audience. 

It was as a high school student in Hungary that Lovász became interested in a career in mathematics. He attended a class given by celebrated mathematician Paul Erdős, and was captivated by the possibilities. “It was the meeting with Dr. Erdős that developed my mathematical talent even further,” he recalls.

The presentation, part of the 10th Annual Kyoto Prize Symposium, will be followed by a question and answer session, and an opportunity for the students and other attendees to meet the renowned mathematician. 

Read more on the Jacobs School news site.

Aquaponics / Bushmeat / Facebook

That's right. On the Jacobs School Facebook fan page, Jacobs School undergrad Peter Cottle gave us some insights on the ECOLIFE engineering project aimed at transitioning people to sustainable fish and vegetable production and away from bushmeat in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and elsewhere.

Below is what Peter explained on Facebook. The original story is on the Jacobs School news site.

Peter: "Working on this project was a great experience from start to finish. ECOLIFE gave us an awesome overview of the project and the overall goal for their aquaponics systems in Africa. From there, our group researched out to the vibrant ...online aquaponics community and performed a lot of preliminary research. With that theoretical knowledge base, some tinkering, and a little creativity, we finally had a breakthrough and made a siphon that will hopefully change the world!"

For a mechanical engineering team project, the engineering students designed a tipper/siphon that will be used in an ECOLIFE aquaponics system in Uganda.

Peter: "The typical bell siphon is very dependent on the incoming flow-rate in order to function. Because reliable pumps and electricity are unavailable in Africa, ECOLIFE wanted us to come up with a siphon that was flow-rate independent. By adding the tipper, the siphon receives pulses of water rather than constant streams. This improves performance at a minimal cost! "

Jacobs School of Engineering Facebook Fan Page / Check it out

Check out the Jacobs School of Engineering Facebook Fan page. We are going to try to get the students who do so much of the research at the Jacobs School to explain their work on Facebook.

Instead of just pushing information out via Facebook, we will try to use the new fan page to provide another dimension to the online Jacobs School of Engineering experience.

Computer scientists in the news this week

Computer scientists from UC San Diego and the U of Washington (the U of W prof is a UCSD PhD alum) are in the news this week due to their work on computer security for cars.

Associated Press: Auto industry guards against hacking

New York Times: Researchers Show How a Car’s Electronics Can Be Taken Over Remotely

Computer World: With hacking, music can take control of your car

Turning Skin Cells to Stem Cells / DNA Mutations

An interesting quote from an interesting story on Discovery by Ed Young on an interesting stem cell mutations paper in Nature from an interesting group of UC San Diego researchers co-led by interesting folks in the Department of Bioengineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering.

Interested? Below, from the Discovery story.

(L-R) Bioengineering professor Kun Zhang, bioengineering Ph.D. student Athurva Gore, and bioengineering alumna and staff researcher Alice Li are authors on the Nature paper. Photo taken in the Kun lab in the Department of Bioengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

As a result, Kun Zhang, who led Gore and Li’s study, is optimistic. He says that we may have found some abnormalities in iPSCs, but we also have the right tools to screen for them. “The first step of solving a problem is to have an accurate understanding of it, and I think we are there. I believe that, guided by these screening tools, the community will come up with many creative solutions in the near future.”

EGames Composite Parachute

You never know when knowing how to make a composite material will come in handy. One of the Jacobs School teams at EGames 2011 made a tomato-protecting composite-material parachute from blue tape and newspaper.  But this is probably not all that surprising, since there is a structural engineering class focused on composite materials where students make skateboards. (Check out the YouTube video: composite material skateboards.)

Photos of composite material parachutes for tomatoes are below.