Chancellor's Challenge 5K Is Friday

Come help raise funds for scholarships at this year's Chancellor's Challenge 5K at RIMAC Field this Friday. The event has raised $2.5 million in scholarship funds to date. Online registration is $10 for students, $15 for others. All participants receive a free T-shirt and a free lunch.

For more information, go to: http://5k.ucsd.edu/

Meet Switchblade, the Little Robot That Could

It can climb stairs, scoot under cars and generally zoom around on all kinds of terrain. Meet Switchblade, a robot designed by the UC San Diego Flow Control and Coordinated Robotics Labs.The lab has put together a new video showcasing all that the robot can do. Watch it below and let us know what you think.

Switchblade also was profiled in Automaton, one of IEEE Spectrum's blogs. Read the story here.

Will It Shake? Jacobs School Engineers Featured on Earthquake Preparedness TV Show

What would happen to your wine rack during an earthquake? The TV show "Totally Unprepared" set out to answer this question with a little help from one of the shake tables at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego.

Engineers installed two dummies and two wine racks on one of the campus' smaller shake tables. One of the racks was tied to the wall with straps and its bottles were secured with museum putty. The other rack was not secured.

Next, engineers put the dummies and wine racks through a small quake, the kind that happens pretty much every month in California. Nothing moved. But when the intensity of the shaking was ratcheted up to a 7.5 magnitude temblor, the wine rack that was not secured came crashing down on top of one of the dummies. Bottles shattered, scattering broken glass everywhere.

"If you value your wine, I'd secure it," concluded Andy Gunthardt, a structural engineer who oversees the shake tables on campus.

"Totally Unprepared" is funded by the California Emergency Management Agency, the California Earthquake Authority and the California Seismic Safety Commission.

Watch the episode that took place at the Jacobs School:

Commercializing Silicon on Sapphire

Commercializing Silicon on Sapphire

Friday, Oct. 7, 2011

11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Jacobs Hall, Lobby

Qualcomm Conference Suite

Ron Reedy, Ph.D., UCSD ’83

Co-Founder and CTO, Peregrine Semiconductor

Silicon on Sapphire, SOS, was invented in 1963 by Hal Manasevit, blessed with incredible technical merit and cursed with seemingly insurmountable manufacturing issues. For the next 3 decades, SOS morphed from a child prodigy to an aged has-been on death’s doorstep. Only a small, dedicated group of Government researchers kept it alive long enough to see its killer application arrive: commercial, high-volume mobile wireless communications.

In 1990 Peregrine Semiconductor was founded on the premise that cellular phones would require integrated RF solutions just as personal computers required integrated digital solutions. Driven by integration and cost, a CMOS solution would dominate this opportunity and a CMOS technology on an RF (insulating) substrate would be the ideal solution.

Twenty years later, Peregrine is an overnight success and about to ship our billionth CMOS on sapphire RFIC. In this presentation, the history of technical, product, business and financial hurdles will be discussed. If you don’t want to be an entrepreneur when we are done, I will have failed.

This event is being presented by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

BIOGRAPHY:  Ronald E. Reedy, Ph.D., a Peregrine co-founder, serves as Chief Technical Officer. Dr. Reedy, who has more than 30 years of experience in the semiconductor industry, co-founded Peregrine in 1990. Previously, he was the branch head of the microelectronics division at Navy Research and Development Center (NRaD). He is responsible for expanding capabilities and usage of Peregrine’s UltraCMOS™ technology.

            Dr. Reedy is credited as one of the inventors of Peregrine's patented UltraCMOS technology. He has over thirty five years of experience in silicon on insulator and silicon on sapphire research, manufacturing and product development. He holds a BSEE degree from the U.S. Naval Academy, an MSEE from US Naval Postgraduate School. In 1983 he received a Ph.D. in Applied Physics/EE from University of California at San Diego based on pioneering work in monolithic integration of optical and electronic components. Dr. Reedy is co-recipient of 2011 IEEE Daniel E. Noble Award for Emerging Technologies (the other co-recipient, Dr. Mark Burgener is also a UCSD alum). Dr. Reedy has published dozens of technical articles and is an author on over thirty patents, all related to microelectronics or electro-optics. He has been a presenter or invited speaker at dozens of technical and financial conferences.

Hosted by Professor Paul Yu

Discovery Channel Features Structural Engineering's Blast Simulator

The Discovery Channel's Daily Planet recently visited the UC San Diego Department of Structural Engineering and Englekirk Structural Engineering Center as part of a 9/11 anniversary special looking at technological advances designed to thwart future attacks.

The Discovery crew filmed the department's blast simulator, the only one of its kind in the world, and interviewed Professor and department Chair Gil Hegemier, an expert in blast mitigation. The hour-long special, which aired in Canada on September 9, featured just seven stories from around the world. The segment on the blast simulator is in Part 3.

You can view the entire special here. The large structure featured in the picture isn't the blast simulator, in case you're wondering. It's the five-story structure the Structural Engineering Department is building at the Englekirk Structural Engineering Center to assess how well current nonstructural elements hold up to earthquakes and post-earthquake fires. The tests will focus on a broad range of systems and equipment that can malfunction during an earthquake and make it more difficult to evacuate buildings, which can lead to more injuries and deaths.

Fun at Engineers on the Green

A live version of “Angry Birds,” a giant inflatable bounce house, free food. These were some of the attractions that brought together hundreds of students to Matthews Quad Wednesday for “Engineers on the Green.” The annual meet and greet event hosted by student organizations at the Jacobs School of Engineering takes place the day before classes start.

This year, students could play carnival-style games, earn tickets and win free giveaways. The Women in Computing group, which recently launched an undergraduate chapter, put on a live version of “Angry Birds,” using plush toys and makeshift catapults. Several student-run projects also were on display. IEEE showcased some of its robots, including the famous micromouse. The Human Powered Vehicle team showed off two of its vehicles. Students could also feast of tacos and corn on the cob, among other goodies.

Read more about Engineers on the Green here.

Watch our Engineers on the Green slideshow on Flickr here.

KPBS Covers Sequencing of Dark Matter of Life Story

KPBS in San Diego recently aired a piece about research by scientists who have developed a new method to sequence and analyze the dark matter of life--the genomes of thousands of bacteria species previously beyond scientists' reach. Researchers at UC San Diego, the J. Craig Venter Institute and Illumina, Inc. published their findings is the Sept. 18 online issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology.
Pavel Pevzner, a computer science professor at the Jacobs School of Engineering and Glenn Tesler, a UCSD mathematics professor, teamed up to design an algorithm that makes this possible.
Click here to listen to the KPBS story.
Click here to read the full press release about the research.
The North County Times also did a piece about the study. Click here to read it.