Engineering is the Future of Health Care. Attend Research Expo at UC San Diego on April 17.

Engineering and computational science are the future of health care. This future includes genomics and the full roster of related “omics” fields, of course. UC San Diego, the Torrey Pines Mesa, and San Diego are taking a leadership role in developing ever-deeper connections between engineering, computing, medicine and health care that are aimed at improving human health. 


UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering graduate students, for example, are working on hundreds of different projects aimed at accelerating health care innovation through engineering applications. Research Expo on April 17 at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering is a great opportunity to meet many of these students and learn about their projects—in person and all in one afternoon.

At Research Expo 2013, (L-R) Roy Levkowitz of Aethlon Medical and a UC San Diego bioengineering alumnus; and Raj Krishnan, Co-Founder and CEO of Biological Dynamics, came back to campus to serve as poster judges. Pictured here with their former PhD advisor, UC San Diego Bioengineering and NanoEngineernig professor Michael Heller.

More than 50 of the 200 posters that engineering graduate students will present at Research Expo are tagged as relevant for the “Life Sciences / Medical Devices & Instruments” industries. And those are just the posters the students tagged themselves. Probably just as exciting are the emerging technologies that COULD be leveraged for future health care / life sciences applications.

For example, at Research Expo 2011, electrical engineering Ph.D. graduate student Chirag Patel (who has since graduated and now works at Qualcomm) received some unexpected feedback on his work on RF MEMS metal-contact switches, work that won him the grand prize of the poster session. During the final round of judging, the faculty judge from bioengineering asked Patel what would happen if he put his switch in water.

“I thought about it, and I answered the question; but then I asked him why would you want to do that, and he said, ‘Well, that would be really useful for us in bioengineering,’” explained Patel, who was surprised that bioengineers would be interested in his work.

We would want to hire you tomorrow if this thing worked in water, the bioengineer said.

What are the will-it-work-in-water questions of 2014? And what exciting advances might that these questions lead to? Find out for yourself. Register for Research Expo, which is Thursday April 17 from 2 to 6 PM at UC San Diego.

In addition to the posters session, Research Expo includes six fast-paced faculty talks and a networking reception.

Bioengineering professor Karen Christman’s talk: “Injectable Biomaterials for Treating Cardiovascular Disease.”

Electrical engineering professor Truong Nguyen’s talk: “3D Model & Video Processing in Health Care Applications”

* Research Expo admission is $100. Register here.

* Half-price for UC San Diego alumni.
* Jacobs School of Engineering Corporate Affiliates Program members receive 2-for-1 admission.

Research Expo 2014 Posters 

Below are just a few of the official “Life Sciences / Medical Devices & Instruments” posters at Research Expo. Have a look at the entire list of poster titles here. When you register for Research Expo, you get access to the full abstracts of each poster.

1. STORED BLOOD QUALITY DIAGNOSTIC DEVICE
Student: Shawn Raymond Mailo 
Professor: Pedro J. Cabrales Arevalo
Industry Application Areas: Life Sciences/Medical Devices & Instruments

4. SILICA NANOPARTICLES FOR ENZYME DELIVERY IN CANCER TREATMENT
Student: Ya-San Yeh 
Professor: Sadik C. Esener
Industry Application Areas: Life Sciences/Medical Devices & Instruments

6. RAPID PROTEASE DETECTION DIRECTLY IN WHOLE BLOOD
Student : Augusta Esmeralda Modestino
Professor: Michael Heller
Industry Application Areas: Life Sciences/Medical Devices & Instruments

13. BIOMATERIAL ASSISTED BONE TISSUE REPAIR
Students: Heemin Kang | Cai Wen | Yu-Ru V. Shih | Yongsung Hwang 
Professor: Shyni Varghese
Industry Application Areas: Life Sciences/Medical Devices & Instruments | Materials

67. REVOLUTIONIZING LAPAROSCOPY WITH GLASSES-FREE MULTIVIEW 3D
Student: Jason Juang 
Professor: Truong Nguyen
Industry Application Areas: Life Sciences/Medical Devices & Instruments

139. INTRAOCULAR PRESSURE SENSOR
Student: Alex Minh Giang Phan
Professor: Frank E. Talke
Industry Application Areas: Life Sciences/Medical Devices & Instruments

The Jacobs School of Engineering

With more than 1,700 engineering graduate students, 200+ engineering professors and $158M is engineering research expenditures, the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering is teeming with cutting-edge research projects and entrepreneurial engineers looking to transfer their advances to society in order to solve problems, advance technology and make the world a better place.

The Institute of Engineering in Medicine at UC San Diego and the Department of Bioengineering at UC San Diego are key player in this process. (Bioengineering Day at UC San Diego is Saturday April 12.)

UC San Diego alumnus speaks at first Wearable Wednesday event in San Diego

Josh Windmiller won an honorable
mention at Research Expo 2011.

Josh Windmiller, a co-founder of San Diego startup Electrozyme and a three-time alumnus of the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering participated in a panel last Wednesday at the first Wearable Wednesday event in San Diego. (Check out the summary on Wearable World News.)

The panel also included Nikhil Jain, VP and Lead on the Qualcomm Toq smart watch and Daniel Obodovski author of “The Silent Intelligence.”

Windmiller earned his undergrad degree in electrical engineering, and MS and PhD degrees in NanoEngineering here at UC San Diego. Among his many activities, he participated, as a graduate student, in of Research Expo.

In 2011, Windmiller won an honorable mention for his NanoEngineering poster: Textile-Based Printed Bioelectronic Sensors.

Research Expo is the annual mega-poster-session for engineering graduate students here at UC San Diego.  Picture 200 engineering graduate students all in one ballroom, discussing their innovations with poster judges and attendees. There are also great faculty talks and a networking reception. (Watch a short promo video.)

You can attend Research Expo for just $100 (Half price for alumni, 2-for-1 admission for CAP companies) and meet 200 of the current crop of engineering graduate students with big ideas. Who knows what opportunities hold for you...after all, San Diego was recently ranked as the best place in the USA to launch a startup.

Windmiller is one of many engineering reseachers turned entrepreneurs at UC San Diego who received a boost from the von Liebig Entrepreneurism Center here at the Jacobs School of Engineering.

Electrozyme is currently incubating at EvoNexus, the San Diego incubator run by CommNexus.

See Clean Tech and Energy Research Advances from UC San Diego Engineers at Research Expo 2014

With more than 1,700 engineering graduate students, 200 engineering professors and $158M is engineering research expenditures, the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering is teeming with exciting projects and entrepreneurial engineers looking to transfer their advances to society in order to solve problems, advance technology and make the world a better place. A good sized chunk of the Jacobs School’s graduate students and professors are working on research that can be leveraged to address our global clean-technology and energy challenges.

At Research Expo 2014 on April 17, UC San Diego engineering graduate students will present about 35 posters that the students have specifically tagged as relevant for “clean technology / energy” applications. But no doubt, more of the 200 students presenting at Research Expo are working on engineering challenges that are relevant for emerging clean technology and energy applications.

Below are just a few of the official clean-tech and energy posters. Have a look at the entire list of poster titles here. When you register for Research Expo, you get access to the full abstracts of each poster.

In addition to the posters session, Research Expo includes six fast-paced faculty talks and a networking reception…all during the afternoon of April 17, here at UC San Diego.

Research Expo admission is $100. Half-price for UC San Diego alumni. Our Corporate Affiliates Program members receive 2-for-1 admission.

28. WORKLOAD SHAPING TO MITIGATE VARIABILITY IN RENEWABLE POWER USE BY DATA CENTERS
Student: Muhammad Abdullah Adnan
Professor: Rajesh Gupta
Industry Application Area: Energy/Clean technology

42. USING OPTICAL NETWORKS IN THE DATA CENTER FOR ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Students: Henrique Da Silva Rodrigues, Henrique Rodrigues
Professor: Tajana S. Rosing
Industry Application Areas: Electronics/Photonics | Energy/Clean technology | Internet, Networking, Systems

93. ONLINE OPTIMIZATION OF WAVE ENERGY CONVERTERS
Student: Daniele Cavaglieri
Professor: Thomas R. Bewley
Industry Application Areas: Control Systems | Energy/Clean technology

109. PREPARATION OF HEXABORIDE NANOCUBES FOR HYDROGEN STORAGE APPLICATIONS
Student: James Timothy Cahill
Professor: Olivia A. Graeve
Industry Application Areas: Aerospace, Defense, Security | Energy/Clean technology | Materials

112. POWERING THE FUTURE WITH SOLAR ENERGY: ASSESSMENT, FORECASTING AND INTEGRATION STRATEGY
Student: Dung Nguyen
Professor: Jan P. Kleissl
Industry Application Areas: Control Systems | Energy/Clean technology | Software, Analytics

120. DECENTRALIZED CHARGING CONTROL FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLES
Student(s): Andres Ivan Cortes 
Professor: Sonia Martinez Diaz
Industry Application Areas: Control Systems | Energy/Clean technology

165. STRETCHING AND CONFORMAL BONDING OF ORGANIC SOLAR CELLS TO HEMISPHERICAL SURFACES
Student: Timothy Francis Oconnor
Professor: Darren J. Lipomi
Industry Application Areas: Electronics/Photonics | Energy/Clean technology | Materials

Standing Strong During Finals Week

Teams of undergraduate structural engineering students enrolled in SE 120, a course focused on engineering graphics and computer-aided structural design, tested their windmill towers during finals week at UC San Diego. Thanks to rapid manufacturing technology -- 3D printing -- the students designed, manufactured and tested windmill blade designs and then redesigned and tested them again over many weeks. One team reportedly designed 18 different blades before settling on a design that satisfied their energy output goals!

Professor Falko Kuester said rapid manufacturing -- the plastic blades are printed in class in just 90 minutes -- allows students to experiment with structural design in ways that just weren't possible before. As part of their final exam, the students' towers were tested for deflection, energy output in a wind tunnel, and placed on a miniature shake table to see how well they held up to earthquakes.

San Diego Companies Looking for Engineering Talent: Attend Research Expo at UC San Diego

Find engineering talent at Research Expo on April 17

ResearchExpo is a great way to connect with the big ideas, graduate students and faculty of the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego.

  

The Top Five Reasons to Attend Research Expo on April 17:

5. Early Access to Ideas and Technologies
At the 200+ poster session, get an early look at big ideas and advances in engineering and information technology. Browse poster titles here. For access to poster abstracts before the event, register now. 

4. Lightning Talks from Engineering Faculty
Ten-minute talks from top faculty from all six engineering departments. Talks cover composite aircraft safety; robotics and education; trainingtomorrow's data scientists; 3D-modeling and healthcare; injectable biomaterials; and wearable sensors. 

3. Stretch your Mind...and your Legs
Enjoy a productive and interactive afternoon on campus. (The new networking app Whova from UC San Diego computer science prof. YY Zhou is in the mix.)

2. Make the Most of this World-Class Engineering Resource
You have a top-ranked, innovative engineering school in your own backyard. Make the most of the opportunities.

1. Connect with 200+ Graduate Students
At the poster session and networking reception, recruit top talent or spark a collaboration. 

Attend Research Expo at the Jacobs School of Engineering

When: Thursday, April 17 from 2:00-6:00 p.m.
Where: UC San Diego Price Center
Register Today: www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/re

Half-Price Admission for UC San Diego Alumni
2-for-1 Admission for members of the Corporate Affiliates Program

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a...pie?

You can't be an organization called Tau Beta Pi and not celebrate Pi Day on March 14. So that's exactly what the San Diego chapter of the honor society decided to do--by dropping a pie (yes, with an e) from the third floor of the Structural and Materials Engineering building at the Jacobs School.

Students said they were inspired by UC San Diego's long held tradition of dropping objects from tall buildings, including the Watermelon drop at Revelle College and the pumpkin drop at Muir College.

So Friday, they dropped a 13-inch, 4.5 lbs pie from the third floor of the SME building. Students got to eat a wide variety of pies after the drop. As an extra bonus, they could estimate how big of a splatter the pie would make and receive gift cards. Turns out cherries went flying in a circle with a 18.2 feet diameter. The closest estimate was 17 feet.

These 200 people ran for Pi(e)

More than 200 students, staff members, faculty and alums turned out today for the third annual Pi Mile Run at the Jacobs School. We were there to document it all and have pictures here.

Photo highlights below.  Thank you to Victor Chen, from the Jacobs School's Office of Engineering Computing for serving as our photographer during the event.

Congratulations of Dave Berry, a graduate student in bioengineering, who crossed the finish line first, running 3.14 miles in just 18 minutes and 40 seconds. The first woman was Jennifer Kaehms, a fifth-year undergraduate student, who also studies bioengineering and finished the race in 21 minutes and 20 seconds. The first dog finisher was Hiccup, a 2-year-old Shiba inu, whose owner John Chen, is a UC San Diego alum who currently works at The Scripps Research Institute.

Participants received a T-shirt and a slice of pie in exchange for their $10 registration. Proceeds from the event benefit the San Diego Science Alliance.

Electrical engineers help uncover emotional contagion on Facebook

If you've been following the news this week,  you'll have read about a recent UC San Diego study that found positive or negative moods spread easily online through social networks such as Facebook.

Published in PLOS ONE, the study analyzes over a billion anonymized status updates among more than 100 million users of Facebook in the United States. Positive posts beget positive posts, the study finds, and negative posts beget negative ones, with the positive posts being more influential, or more contagious.

Electrical engineering graduate student Lorenzo Coviello was a major contributor to the study, which was led by James Fowler, professor of political science in the Division of Social Sciences and of medical genetics in the School of Medicine at UC San Diego.  Coviello is a Ph.D. student working in the laboratory of electrical engineering professor Massimo Franceschetti.

(L_R) Lorenzo Coviello, Ph.D. student in electrical engineering, and his advisor, professor Massimo Franceschetti. 

The study has been getting lots of coverage in the national and international media because of what it suggests about the potential for public wellbeing.  Emotions, they write, “might ripple through social networks to generate large-scale synchrony that gives rise to clusters of happy and unhappy individuals.” And with ever more avenues for expression in a digitally connected world, they write, “we may see greater spikes in global emotion that could generate increased volatility in everything from political systems to financial markets.”

A few links to the coverage including interviews with Lorenzo and Massimo:


Wall Street Journal video interview with Lorenzo Coviello

Quartz interview with Massimo Franceschetti

 NPR

BBC

USA Today

And easily the best headline from the study came from the Jacksonville, Fla.-based The Florida Times Union:

Your-sad-sack-facebook-posts-may-lead-to global-frowning

Watch a Jacobs School alum explain how you can join the search for Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370 from your computer

Watch Jacobs school alum Luke Barrington explain Wall Street Journal reporter Deborah Kan how the company he co-founded, Tomnod, is helping look for Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370.

The company, which was acquired by Digital Globe, a leading supplier of commercial satellite imagery, harnesses the power of crowdsourcing to scour satellite images for information. The best applications for the technology are search and rescue operations during natural disasters.

See how you can join the search here. 

Other news stories about Tomnod's efforts:

CNN

ABC News

Fox News

Reuters

NBC News

LA Times

San Jose Mercury News

Xconomy

More about Tomnod, which was co-founded by four Jacobs School alumni, here.

Boy Scouts coming to campus for electronics, programming workshops with IEEE

Boy Scouts from all over San Diego County will be on campus tomorrow, March 8, for the STEM Merit Badge Fair sponsored by the UCSD Student Branch of IEEE. Organizer and computer engineering student, Jeremy Kao, said the event is in its second year and designed to get middle school and high school students excited about pursuing higher education in a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) field.

Last year's event hosted more than 150 area Boy Scouts who learned to "solder, assemble circuits, the basics of electricity and electronic components, the many sensors of a robot, and the thinking that goes into designing a robot," says Kao. This year's workshops will focus on electronics and programming.

We can't wait to see the pictures, but here is a snap from last year's event.  The March STEM Merit Badge fair will be from 9a.m. to 5 p.m., March 8, in the Humanities and Social Sciences building.

Video: Research Expo is April 17 / Are you in?

Research Expo is a great chance to get to talk to 200+ engineering graduate students and find out about their research projects all in one afternoon at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. This event comes around just once a year. It's on Thursday April 17.

More than 100 turn out for beginners' programming competition

A total of 118 students turned out for the 2014 winter quarter beginner's programming competition, sponsored by Google and organized by the UC San Diego chapter of Women in Computing. The contest targeted programmers who just were getting their start. They could work in teams or by themselves to answer a series of questions. Everyone got some swag and free pizza.
See below for pictures of the fun.