Wireless Sensor Research in Technology Review

The wireless sensor research from electrical engineering PhD student Yu "Mike" Chi and bioengineering professor Gert Cauwenberghs is profiled today in a Technology Review story by Lauren Gravitz, "Biosensors Comfortable Enough to Wear 24-7."

The story provides some really interesting details about how this technology could be used to improve at-home monitoring for heart patients. The story also includes some tantalizing forward-looking projects that could help people who are paralyzed communicate via their thoughts recorded by sensors that pick up brain activity.

Check out the story.

Learn more about the research and the UC San Diego student business plan competition that Mike Chi won in spring 2010.

See related photos on the Jacobs School blog.

Photo caption: Yu Mike Chi, an electrical engineering PhD student at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, demonstrates sensors how his sensors that do not not directly touch his skin pick up his heart beat.

Alley Project "Up Students Alley"

The "alley engineering" that UC San Diego seniors in the Urban Studies and Planning program performed on a Hillcrest is described in a recent story "Students turn alley into oasis" in the San Diego Union Tribune.

Hillcrest is very much a UCSD community, especially given that the shuttle between the UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest and the La Jolla campus means people can go back and forth without using a car.

The students collaborated with the Hillcrest Business Association to research how to transform the urban element into a pedestrian-friendly area. They applied their findings to a Hillcrest alley between Fourth and Fifth avenues near Robinson Avenue by covering graffiti-stained walls with art and bougainvillea.

That’s not all.

Students also proposed replacing the concrete road with permeable pavement, which soaks up stagnant water. During a recent exhibition, they set up a coffee shop for passers-by. They also strung lights from fire escape to fire escape.