News Releases from 2016
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December 20, 2016
Shake, Burn and Learn
On a recent afternoon, two Jacobs School engineers equipped with 3D glasses stood in front of a towering 12’ digital reproduction of a six-story building, projected onto a curved wall of screens. They had tested the building a few weeks before, putting its light-weight steel frame through a series of increasingly powerful earthquake and fire tests on the world’s largest outdoor shake table at UC San Diego. Now researchers were zooming in and out of the building’s digital twin to assess damage.

December 13, 2016
Dennis Abremski appointed as Executive Director of the Institute for the Global Entrepreneur at UC San Diego
The UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering is pleased to announce the appointment of Dennis Abremski as the Executive Director of The Institute for the Global Entrepreneur (IGE). The Institute is a collaboration between the Jacobs School of Engineering and Rady School of Management, dedicated to training global technology leaders and translating university discoveries to market.

December 13, 2016
Engineers develop a new non-invasive method to detect infections in prostheses
Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a new non-invasive method to detect infections in prostheses used for amputees, as well as for knee, hip and other joint replacements. The method, which is at the proof of concept stage, consists of a simple imaging technique and an innovative material to coat the prostheses.
November 29, 2016
Jacobs School Recruiting for 16 Positions in 2016-17
The Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego is recruiting for 16 open faculty positions in the 2016-17 academic year. Many recruitments have been posted—each of which can lead to more than one hire. The positions include 11 research faculty and six teaching faculty. Areas of focus include robotics, plasma science and engineering as well as and the social impact of science, medicine and technology.

October 13, 2016
Getting to a Zero Carbon Future
Avoiding the worst consequences of climate change by reducing global carbon emissions to as close to zero as possible is one of humanity’s most pressing challenges. The University of California San Diego has launched the Deep Decarbonization Initiative to do just that. And they plan to do so in the real world—where costs matter. The initiative is a collaborative effort of UC San Diego faculty from across campus working at the intersection of science, technology and policy. It embeds the study of modern societies—economics, politics and social organization—within expert technical research on energy systems. The goal is to understand not just how energy systems function, but also how policy and social movements can transform energy and protect the planet.

October 7, 2016
UC San Diego breaks income boundaries in engineering
“This is just the beginning of what technology like this can do,” said Gabriel Davalos, an incoming aerospace engineering major. Davalos was referring to a miniature table lamp he and some of his peers built that turned on when something nearby made a loud noise. The students also fabricated a tiny house to protect the lamp using 3D printed materials and rapid prototyping tools.

October 6, 2016
From Satellites to Biodegradable Surfboards
UC San Diego showcases real-world applications of research at Maker FaireA surfboard made of algae-based foam. A small satellite that could be put into orbit around the moon. A balloon that carries experiments to the outer reaches of the atmosphere. These were some of the innovations that students, faculty and alumni from UC San Diego showed off this weekend at San Diego Maker Faire, a gathering of more than 200 innovators in a festival-like atmosphere at Balboa Park.

September 29, 2016
UC San Diego's First Solar Car
During the summer of his third year at the University of California San Diego, electrical engineering major Ari Chatterji was taking classes and felt the need to get experience doing something more hands-on before his senior year.

September 14, 2016
New faculty focus on robotics, data and cybersecurity and more
Thirteen new faculty are joining the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California San Diego this fall. The hires are part of a plan to grow the school’s faculty to 280 by 2020. Six of the hires were focused on robotics, including Henrik Christensen, the director of the Contextual Robotics Institute at UC San Diego and Todd Hylton, the institute’s executive director. Other hires focused on engineering and clinical medicine, data and cyber security, and materials and energy as well as networks, structures and extreme events and signal processing.Below are short summaries of their research work.

June 28, 2016
WPI to Conduct Fire Tests Aimed at Better Understanding Post-Earthquake Fires in Cold-Formed Steel Buildings
A team of researchers from the Department of Fire Protection Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) will be conducting burn tests aimed at better understanding the effects of post-earthquake fires on cold-formed steel-framed buildings and assessing various methods for preventing appliances and broken gas mains from igniting fires during quakes.

June 13, 2016
Six-story steel frame building undergoes seismic and fire testing on world's largest outdoor shake table
A team of engineers is testing a six-story, lightweight steel-frame building on the world’s largest outdoor seismic shake table this month at the University of California San Diego. The goal is to better understand how cold-formed steel structures withstand earthquakes and the fires that may follow. This is the tallest cold-formed steel-frame structure to ever undergo tests on a shake table.

May 31, 2016
In new program, UC San Diego engineering graduate students and MBA students team up to drive innovation
Nick Forsch relies heavily on clinician feedback for his research. As a bioengineering Ph.D. student at the University of California San Diego, he is developing computational tools to enable doctors to better understand their patients’ diseases. His experiences translating research to end users led Forsch to join a new program at UC San Diego that places Jacobs School of Engineering graduate students and MBA students in the same Rady School of Management classes including the Rady School’s signature Lab to Market program. This pilot program is part of the new UC San Diego Institute for the Global Entrepreneur that will launch June 2, 2016.

April 18, 2016
Stretchable, flexible, wearable solar cells take top prize at Research Expo 2016
Solar cells that are stretchable, flexible and wearable won the day and the best poster award from a pool of 215 at Research Expo 2016 April 14 at the University of California San Diego. The winning nanoengineering researchers aim to manufacture small, flexible devices that can power watches, LEDs and wearable sensors. The ultimate goal is to design and build much bigger flexible solar cells that could be used as power sources and shelter in natural disasters and other emergencies.

March 11, 2016
Arts and engineering students collaborate in new course at UC San Diego
Students from a structural engineering and a visual arts class are working together, shoulder to shoulder, on a collaborative final project despite the fact that they are in different classes. This visual arts and engineering mashup is happening in the new EnVision Maker Studio at UC San Diego and involves students in Structural Engineering 1 and Visual Arts 40.
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February 24, 2016
New Research Centers and 200+ Graduate Student Posters to be Highlighted at Research Expo 2016
Advances coming out of new industry-focused research centers at the University of California, San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering will be highlighted in faculty talks and in some of the more than 200+ graduate student posters that will be presented on April 14, 2016 at Research Expo.

February 1, 2016
Jacobs School Researchers Cited Among 'World's Most Influential Scientific Minds'
Four researchers at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego were included on the 2015 listing of “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds,” an annual compendium of “Highly Cited Researchers” by Thomson Reuters, a multinational mass media and information company.