Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Jack Keil Wolf named to National Academy of Sciences


Congratulations to electrical engineering professor Jack K. Wolf. Today, he was elected to join the National Academy of Sciences.

The press release is here. (Update: May 3, 2010: The San Diego Union Tribune ran a short piece on the award.)

Some context from Larry Larson:

“If you think about saving data on a hard disk, the magnetic medium is imperfect. Jack’s innovations have allowed us to read data to and write data from these magnetic devices with near perfect fidelity. This is at the heart of the information revolution,” said Lawrence Larson, Professor and Chair, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

Info on Wolf's research:

Wolf, a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the Jacobs School of Engineering, is an expert in digital information storage and signal processing for digital recording. He was an early proponent of applying information and communications theory to the construction of ultra-high-density information storage. The research results of Wolf and his students have been incorporated in the design of several storage systems. Wolf leads the Signal Processing Group – dubbed the “WolfPack” – within UCSD’s Center for Magnetic Recording Research (CMRR).

Wolf is the Stephen O. Rice Professor of Magnetics at UCSD. He earned his Ph.D. in 1960 from Princeton University, and later taught at New York University, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Wolf joined the UCSD faculty in 1984.

UCSD Triton RobotiX in Robogames AND Popular Mechanics story

UCSD Triton RobotiX...the group of Jacobs School students who builds robots for battle against other robots competed in Robogames over the weekend. Daniel (not Darren!) Yang, one of the 2010 team leaders is quoted in a Popular Mechanics story about Robogames.

According to the Triton Robotix Web site:


UCSD Triton Robotix managed to pull through and do well in the competition. With 21 entries from colleges and professionals from around the world, our robot Kraken fought its way to 5th place.

Learn more at the UCSD ASME website.

Final Tally:

Kraken vs N/A : win
Kraken vs Poppy: win
Kraken vs Dark Cyde: win
Kraken vs TSA Inspected: loss
Kraken vs Touro: loss

Grudge match challenges:

Kraken vs DracUCLA -> UCLA forfeits (but they’re cool)
Kraken vs Circle Strafe -> Caltech forfeits (but they’re still cool)
Ziggy vs Kraken+DracUCLA+Circle Strafe -> We all forfeit against CM Robotics (lolll)


Sailor Lab research highlighted in a CNN cellphones for biochemical attack sensing story





Professor Michael Sailor and his lab are mentioned in a CNN news blog story about cell phones for sensing biochemical attacks. An excerpt from the story is below:



One of the technologies being examined is a porous silicon “nose” that is based on – amazingly - the beetle shell. Professor Michael Sailor at the University of California San Diego uses silicon to mimic the way a beetle’s complex shell produces iridescence. Sailor uses chemistry to give silicon particles a sponge-like structure. The particles’ pores are designed to recognize and sop up molecules of certain toxins. So these “artificial” noses can potentially detect scores of chemical compounds.

Professor Sailor's primary appointment is in the UCSD Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, but he also holds an appointment in the Department of Bioengineering in the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

Solar Concentrator Video has approx 1,600 views in 6 days

1600 views for the solar concentrator video...not bad for a technial video...have YOU seen it yet?




I'm not sure where the traffic came from...according to YouTube insight, most of the views have no direct referrer link...meaning that the video spread virally.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Solar Concentrator Video on YouTube

Jason Karp and his solar concentrator have made their way to YouTube. (Today YouTube, tomoroww???)




Want more? Read the academic paper here: http://psilab.ucsd.edu/publications.html

By the way, this is Joseph Ford's lab at the Jacobs School...birthplace of "origami optics"...and the inventor of origami optics, Jason Tremblay earned his PhD and is a postdoc in the Ford lab.



Caption: Electrical engineering Ph.D. student Jason Karp won the 2010 Rudee Research Expo Outstanding Poster Award. His winning poster: “Planar Micro-Optic Solar Concentration”.

photo credit (above): UC San Diego / Erik Jepsen

Caption: The new solar concentrator design (right) from UC San Diego collects sunlight with thousands of small lenses imprinted on a common sheet. All these lenses couple into a flat “waveguide” which funnels light to a single photovoltaic cell. Older system designs (left) require many photovoltaic cells which each need to be aligned and electrically connected.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Solar Concentrator Video




Above is a video of Jason Karp talking about the technology that won him top prize at Research Expo 2010.

Check out the list of departmental winners and honorable mentions here.

I'm excited to see what happens with this technology...which Karp et al published earlier this year in Optics Express. (Check out the PDF here).

Update (2:55 pm on April 20): the "post event" site for Research Expo 2010 is live.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Research Expo Poster Winners by Department

Congratulations to all six students who won top honors for the departmental category at Research Expo 2010.

Bioengineering
Poster title: “Real-Time Monitoring of Sustained Drug Release with Photonic Porous Silicon Particles”
Student: Elizabeth Chung Pui Wu
Faculty advisor: Michael Sailor

Computer Science and Engineering
Poster title: “Energy Management in Virtualized Environments”Additional student author: Gaurav Dhiman
Faculty advisor: Tajana Simunic-Rosing

Electrical and Computer Engineering
Poster title: “Planar Micro-Optic Solar Concentration”
Student: Jason Harris Karp
Faculty advisor: Joseph Ford

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Poster title: “Multifunctional Nanowire Systems for Drug Delivery”
Student: Karla Sue Brammer
Faculty advisor: Sungho Jin

NanoEngineering
Poster title: “An Early Point-of-Care Shock Diagnostic: Clinically Relevant Detection of Protease Activity in Whole Blood”
Student: Roy Brian Lefkowitz
Faculty advisors: Michael Heller and Geert Schmid-Schönbein

Structural Engineering
Poster title: “Nonlinear Ultrasonic Guided Waves for Health Monitoring of Prestressing Tendons in Post-Tensioned Concrete Structures”
Student: Claudio Nucera Faculty
Advisor: Francesco Lanza di Scalea

Science and Engineering Library Award for Best Use of the Literature
NanoEngineering
Poster title: “An Early Point-of-Care Shock Diagnostic: Clinically Relevant Detection of Protease Activity in Whole Blood”
Student: Roy Brian Lefkowitz
Faculty advisors: Michael Heller and Geert Schmid-Schönbein

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Poster title: “Solar Fuel From CO2: A Stand-Alone Off-Grid Device”
Student: Aaron John Sathrum
Faculty advisor: Clifford P. Kubiak

Honorable Mentions by Department (below):

HONORABLE MENTIONS
Bioengineering
Poster title: “Design and Characterization of an Injectable Pericardial Matrix Gel: A Potentially Autologous Scaffold for Cardiac Tissue Engineering”
Student: Sonya B Seif-Naraghi
Faculty: Karen Christman

Computer Science and Engineering
Poster title: “Localizing Objects In Images By Combining Contextual Cues”
Student: Carolina Galleguillos
Faculty: Serge Belongie and Gert Lanckriet

Electrical and Computer Engineering
Poster title: “Silicon Nanowire Phototransistors for Ultra High Responsivity Visible and Infrared Detection”
Students: Arthur Yasheng Zhang and Hongkwon Kim
Faculty: Yu-Hwa Lo

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Poster title: “New Studies and Observations Highlighting Alternative Techniques to Mitigate Runaway Electron Effects in Tokamak Rapid Shutdowns”
Student: Alexander Nevil Tronchin-James
Faculty: George Tynan

NanoEngineering
Poster title: “A Plausible Mechanism for H4-K16 Acetylation Triggered Unfolding of Chromatin”
Student: Darren Yang
Faculty: Gaurav Arya

Structural Engineering
Poster title: “Computational Fluid-Structure Interaction for Wind Energy Applications”
Student: Ming-Chen Hsu
Faculty: Yuri Bazilevs