ThoughtSTEM, company founded by UC San Diego alumni, receives $330k grant from National Science Foundation

ThoughtSTEM, LLC, a San Diego-based company teaching computer science skills to students ages 5 to 18, has received a $330,000 Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Science Foundation. ThoughtSTEM is most well-known for being the first company to release a Minecraft Modding software, LearnToMod, that allows kids as young as 5 to reprogram the popular video game, Minecraft.

ThoughtSTEM is led by UC San Diego computer science Ph.D. alumnus Stephen Foster and biochemistry PhD alumna Lindsey Handley.

“Thanks to the NSF, we are now going to be able to reach more students in different countries with different interests," Handley said. "The same experience students have had in our classrooms will soon be available online to both students... and adults. We're really interested in sharing our educational tools with more adults so they can help us reach more kids.”

With this new grant funding, ThoughtSTEM will able to offer more of their innovative, video game-inspired computer science curriculum to students around the world by moving online the curriculum they've been using in classes with students in San Diego. There will also be a push to develop a completely new computer science curriculum designed to meet the interests of a broader population of video game-playing students worldwide.

The mission of ThoughtSTEM is to find every student interested in understanding how computer programming works and teach them in a context they can understand - video games. ThoughtSTEM has taught over 7,000 students in San Diego and over 100,000 students online.

This grant is allowing us to accelerate our development of computer science educational products for students who we are looking for new ways to interact with their favorite video games," Foster said. "Our students in San Diego have really enjoyed our approach, and we are excited to now be able to share it with other areas.”

ThoughtSTEM also was co-founded by computer science Ph.D. alumna Sarah Guthals, who now works at GitHub.

"U Hack" and "Bog Love;" What happens when you train a neural network to write messages for Valentine's Day candy hearts

What happens when you train neural networks to write messages for candy hearts on Valentine's Day:

Here is Shane's original post:
 http://aiweirdness.com/ 
And here are links to the news coverage:
NPR
Popular Science
CNET
Bustle

For more on Shane's previous experiments on neural networks, read our story here:
When artificial intelligence is funny

This computer program really wants you to try strawberry ham pie this Thanskgiving

Still looking for a recipe idea for your Thanksgiving pie? Janelle Shane, who got her PhD in electrical engineering at the Jacobs School, is here to help--well, soft of.
Shane has trained a neural network, a type of computer program that learn by looking at examples, to generate recipe titles, based on a database of 2237 sweet and savory pie recipes.
The results didn't disappoint.
The neural network git creative and suggested Strawberry Ham Pie and Turkey Cinnamon Pie, as well as Impossible Maple Spinach Apple Pie--whatever that is.
Other suggestions were more on point, including Baked Cream Puff Cake, Eggnog Peach Pie and Fried Pumpkin Pie.
For more fun pie names and other neural network merriment, check out Shane's blog: http://aiweirdness.com/

So Bon Appetit! And Happy Thanksgiving!

Need a last-minute Halloween costume idea? This neural network has got you covered!

Need a last-minute costume idea for Halloween? How about a cyborg bat? Or a vampire shark? Or a magic sexy hamburger?
These are all costumes generated by a neural network trained by Jacobs School alumna Janelle Shane. Shane, who earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at UC San Diego in the lab of Professor Shaya Fainman, works with lasers by day. But her hobby is working with neural networks to create funny data sets.
For this project, she crowdsourced 4500 costume ideas from her blog readers and fed them to a neural network.
The network did not disappoint, generating costume suggestions such as vampire Big Bird, celery blue Frankenstein and strawberry shark.
Soon, Shane's readers were getting into the game and drawing the costumes the neural network suggested.
First up, strawberry shark:

And then: Bearley Quinn (courtesy of Twitter user @vonbees):

But Shane's readers weren't done. Soon they started making some of the costume suggestions a reality.
Twitter user Liz Walsh dressed up as the Dragon of Liberty:

Twitter user @HerbLovesTech and his wife dressed up as Professor Panda and Shark Princess:

And Shane? She took her inspiration from an entry in the costume data base. She will be Ruth Vader Ginsburg (that's a mash up of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Star Wars villain Darth Vader):

For more neural-network generated Halloween costumes, read Shane's blog post here. And read this news story by writer Rae Paoletta here and this Popular Mechanics story by writer Sophie Weiner.

Reinventing the Wheel: Former Triton Racing members invent novel public health device

What do race cars, aerospace engineering and HIV/AIDS have in common? They all played a part in the making of FluxErgy, a medical diagnostics company started by two UC San Diego aerospace engineering alumni.

Co-founders Tej Patel (BS MS, ‘12) and Ryan Revilla (BS, ’10) have similar stories – they both came to UC San Diego for aerospace engineering, and they both saw the  Triton Racing (UC San Diego’s Formula SAE team) car parked on Library Walk one day and thought, I want to work on that!

A short time later, the two found themselves working on the next iteration of Triton Racing’s competition car together, and they became fast friends.

“Triton Racing was easily the most important thing I did during my time at UC San Diego to get hands-on experience,” said Patel. “At the time, the team was only 7-8 people, so we each had the opportunity to work on every part of the car. Ryan worked on the engine, but he also helped build the chassis.”

After graduating, both were hired by a former member of the MIT Formula SAE team to build sensors for real racecars.

After living the dream working on high-end racecars for a few years, Patel began to itch to build something that could help people.

At the time, his wife (Priya Bhat Patel, BS ‘10, Physiology and Neuroscience) was working on her masters in public health, so he set out to find a way to build a point-of-care testing device.

“I approached Ryan with the idea, and between his garage and my kitchen, we built our first prototype,” said Patel.

At first, Patel and Revilla thought they’d build a low-cost PCR machine, but they knew they wanted one platform that could perform a wide array of tests, such as viral load and blood cell count. Instead, they built a general-purpose device that uses a test card with an embedded program that tells the machine what kind of unique test to run. The device works by taking various optical and electrical measurements from the function specific test card.

By adapting the design of the test card rather than the device for each type of test, the co-founders eliminated the need for multiple machines to conduct the typical assortment of laboratory analyses. With a simple workflow and small footprint, the low cost device and test card are meant for point-of-care use locally and in low-resource settings.

“Because we came into this as engineers, we took a very different approach to the assays than a biologist would,” said Patel. “We found that there were quite a few unnecessary steps in traditional assays. We found ourselves asking, ‘do we really need to do it this way?’”

Patel and Revilla attribute this approach to their time spent at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. During that time, the Triton Racing team learned a big lesson about taking a systems level approach to building a racecar.

“The first year Ryan and I were a part of the team, we built a really complex car,” said Patel. “But because of that, we didn’t make it to the competition. We learned that you can have the fanciest, lightest wheel ever, but if the car can’t go around a turn it’s useless.”

That lesson in systems engineering has shaped the company the two built together. They have since hired six more UC San Diego graduates.

When asked what advice they have for startups, Patel and Revilla agreed that it’s best to fail early and often.

“Oftentimes, startups don’t think about scalability,” said Patel. “Our device went through nine iterations in one year in order to optimize its manufacturability.”

If you’d like to join FluxErgy’s First Access Program as a technology development partner or Beta user, please contact info@FluxErgy.com. Find out more information at www.FluxErgy.com

Alumni faculty profile: Olivia Graeve

It’s no secret that UC San Diego’s reputation as a top-ranked university is a major draw for prospective students—but it’s also pulling many graduates back to campus to serve as members of the faculty. In classrooms and labs across the university, our alumni are leading new directions in research and helping to train the next generation of innovators.

“We’re proud to have so many talented graduates who return to campus as faculty members, bringing with them fresh thinking that enriches our academic community,” said Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla. “UC San Diego is ranked the 15th best university in the world, a testament to our faculty and students.”

 Olivia Graeve is a professor of mechanical engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering and a proud native of the San Diego-Tijuana region. She grew up in Tijuana and attended Southwestern Community College before transferring to UC San Diego to study structural engineering. As an undergraduate, she worked in the lab of Professor Joanna McKittrick and saw first-hand what it takes to run a research laboratory.

“The experience put me on an excellent path toward the professoriate,” she said.

Graeve is working on developing materials that can withstand extreme impacts and are faster and more cost-effective to manufacture. Earlier this year, her lab developed a record-breaking steel alloy—a material that could be used for everything from drill bits, to body armor for soldiers, to meteor-resistant casing for satellites.

Graeve held faculty positions at the University of Nevada, Reno and Alfred University in New York before joining the UC San Diego faculty. Reflecting on how the campus has changed since she was a student, Graeve says that UC San Diego is bigger and better, with more opportunities for students, staff and faculty.

Today, she’s doing her part to ensure the university continues on its upward trajectory. Graeve leads a number of outreach programs for underrepresented students on both sides of the border. She also serves as director of the CaliBaja Center for Resilient Materials and Systems, which brings together researchers across the San Diego-Tijuana region.

“The opportunity to serve my alma mater and the region in which I grew up is something that is very important to me,” said Graeve. “Coming back to UC San Diego was coming home. Who would not want to be home?”

UC San Diego Students Fabricate Device to Protect Seniors from a Fall

The AirSave team demonstrated their device during their presentation at the electrical engineering design competition in June

Falls are the leading cause of death from injury among people 65 and older killing more than 400,000 people each year. “This number is projected to increase due to the shift in the baby-boomer population,” said Jun Lu, a recent electrical engineering graduate of the University of California San Diego (BS ’16). “It is a common occurrence, seniors talk about how falling or the fear of falling affects their lives everyday but there is not a widely accepted solution.”

For Lu, that number became real when his great grandmother died after a fall. Together with electrical engineering graduate students Aida Shahi and Borhan Vasli (who are both specializing in machine learning), and Gabriel Frischer, a third year neuroscience major at UC San Diego, Lu created a device to protect seniors from this kind of accident.

The AirSave team took second place at the UC San Diego Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering’s design competition in June

The device, called the AirSave impact protection system, took second place at the UC San Diego Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering’s design competition in June. The competition was part of the university’s Aging and Innovation Initiative and is the result of a collaboration between the Jacobs School of Engineering and the Stein Institute for Research on Aging. The goal for the projects in the competition was to improve quality of life for senior citizens.

Read more from the San Diego Union Tribune

During their research, they found that fatal falls occur mainly due to an impact of the hip, however impacts to the spine, neck and head are also common and can be catastrophic for the seniors. “We wanted to create something all-encompassing,” said Frischer.

The device includes a set of four air bags (one protecting the neck and cranium and three around the waist for hip protection) and a CO2 cartridge from a paintball gun to inflate them just before hitting the ground.

The students are using the resources in the UC San Diego EnVision Arts and Engineering Maker Studio to fabricate prototypes. “We used the 3D printers to fabricate the airbags and the housing for the electrical components, and other tools like the function generators,” said Lu. “It’s a collaborative space, so we were also able to come up with ideas by talking to other students.”

"The AirSave Team was in the Maker Studio nearly every hour that we were open, and it is no surprise that their hard work and dedication earned them top marks in the competition," said Jesse DeWald, the facility’s director. "I think the best part of the AirSave Team using the EnVision Maker Studio, is that they inspired the other students around them to think about these very important problems and to help them realize that they have the tools and abilities to design the solutions to the problems."

“We learned a lot about the process of designing something,” said Frischer. “The biggest lesson was that we needed to design for the people we were making the device for. Initially, we thought we wanted to create a vest, but after talking to seniors, we decided on an exoskeleton.”

AirSave "exoskeleton" design

The change came about after the students spoke with residents at the La Costa Glen retirement community in Carlsbad and similar facilities.

“Everyone has a different style,” said Frischer. “It became clear that the seniors wanted a device they could wear underneath their clothes and still be comfortable. The frame of the exoskeleton is made of impact-absorbing foam, which adds an addition layer of protection on top of the airbags. Our design is unique, light, completely concealable under the wearers clothing and highly protective.”

The AirSave system includes a sensor that collects acceleration and coordination data and determines whether the person is falling, or just bending over to pick something up.

“We’re still working to improve the algorithm,” said Lu. “It’s pretty good though – the only thing it can’t differentiate is the jumping motion.”

When the AirSave team demonstrated their device during their presentation at the electrical engineering design competition in June, Frischer performed an actual tumble while wearing an accelerometer prototype so that the audience could see the rapid acceleration data from the sensor on the screen.

“The next step is to connect the airbag inflation component to the sensing component, which requires a high voltage battery, said Lu, who plans to work on the project full time next year. “The best part is, this is only the beginning.”

You can learn more about the project and how you can get involved here.

Additional Design Competition Results

In first place was the group that developed the MightyCart, a motorized, foldable shopping cart users steer by pressing sensors on the handle, making it easier to handle heavy loads. Ryan Collins, Gannon Gesiriech, Boulos Haddad and Kevin Nematzadeh — known collectively as Fountain of Youth — took home the $4,000 top prize.

The team that took home third place at the Design Competition was Team VITA, which developed pressure-sensitive carpet tiles embedded with LED lights that light a person’s path in the dark and alert others when someone has fallen. The team members were Chao-yu Lee, Wen Li, Pushen Wang and Edward Zhong. 

Engineering alumna, now on San Diego city council, honroed by UCSD Alumni

San Diego City Council President SHERRI LIGHTNER, REVELLE ’72, M.S. ’78, a licensed mechanical engineer turned public official, believes that you sometimes need to break things to make them better. “If you don’t break something, you don’t know if you have an optimized design,” says Lightner. “I’m an engineer. We make things work, we solve problems.”

Seamlessly combining her engineering background with public service, Lightner has also broken barriers. Representing District One, she is the first female engineer to serve on the San Diego City Council, as well as the first female Council President. A leader in civic engagement, Lightner has served on multiple community planning organizations and committees. She was the first official to develop a comprehensive water policy in order to provide San Diego with an affordable and sustainable water supply. She led the effort to establish the Economic Development Committee in 2011, then served as Chair for over 4 years.

Lightner hadn’t always imagined that her career would lead her to City Council and the opportunity to be impactful and affect such profound change. What started with a simple passion for community service—beginning with the Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts and La Jolla Shores Association—would later evolve into a much grander ambition of addressing the city’s most pressing concerns.

“It was serving in the community that led me to believe that there were better ways that the City could deliver to its citizens, and to actually bring the neighborhoods to City Hall,” says Lightner. As Council President, a position she has held since 2014, her priorities include economic development, expansion of the tech, cybertech and blue tech industries in San Diego, water policy, promotion of STEM education, as well as closing the job skills gap and updating the City’s charter.

Despite everything that is on her plate, Lightner remains tirelessly dedicated to improving her community, a job that she notes cannot be completed without the technical and analytical background skills gained at UC San Diego. She additionally credits her alma mater for contributing to the lasting values that guide her every day, especially the importance of confidence and accountability. “UC San Diego taught you to be fearless,” adds Lightner. “You learned to stand up and account for yourself, and stand up for other folks as well.”

Now in her final year serving on the San Diego City Council, Lightner is focusing on finishing what she started eight years ago. “I want to be known as a council member who truly represented my community,” she says. ”If you don’t ask for something, the answer is always no. That’s why I’m continually asking for what I think our residents and communities deserve.”

Ph.D. alum helps make robotics and programming accessible

As a Ph.D. student at the Jacobs School of Engineering, Nick Morozovsky built many robots, including SkySweeper, a power line inspector, and Switchblade, a roving and balancing robot. And he worked on bringing robotics to everyone, especially young students.

Morozovsky worked with Solana Beach-based Rokenbok Education on a robotics kit that teaches children as young as 8 how to program Arduino microcontrollers. The ROKbuino Programmable Robotics Set is now available on Kickstarter for $99 off its retail pricing. Morozovsky designed the original prototypes on a low-cost 3D printer. Rokenbok is now seeking funding to mass-produce the kits by using injection molding, which is much faster but requires a significant upfront capital investment. The company hopes to bring the sets to homes across the country as well as under-served schools where children have limited access to STEM opportunities.

The kit allows students to connect motors and a variety of sensors to build and program a beetle bot, a scorpion hunter and a Ferris Wheel. It includes more than 400 building components. The Kickstarter campaign runs until June 30.

After earning his Ph.D. in 2014, Morozovsky co-founded start up Accel Robotics with fellow Jacobs School alum Marius Buibas. 

Morozovsky with SkySweeper, a robot designed to inspect power lines.

Let your inner kid geek come out to play, says alumna

Remember the first time you geeked out over something? It might have been technology, or cooking, or a book--it doesn't matter. That's the feeling Jacobs School alumna Jennifer Arguello is trying to spark in a new generation of computer scientists. She is especially focused on under-represented students, such as people of color and women.
Arguello, who is now the senior technical development manager at GitHub, gave a talk at an event for the SheCodes organization. It is now featured on the Smithsonian's Latino Virtual Museum.
According to the museum's website:

Argüello is part of the Silicon Valley Latino advisory board, an organization “committed to celebrate the stories of successful Latinas and Latinos, to challenge perceptions and inspire new generations of Latino heroes”.

During her talk, she urged her audience to volunteer, enlist their company for support, become mentors and advocate for computer standards across the board in elementary, middle and high school.

"Find your inner boy geek or girl geek and allow them to play," she said. 

Photo of the Week: Electrical engineering professor Charles Tu connected with an alumni in the airport over the holidays

Electrical engineering professor Charles Tu connected with an alumni in the airport over the holidays

"It was very nice bumping into an ECE alum at the airport on New Year's Eve!" said Charles Tu, a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. "It had been several years since I'd seen Oluwafemi Akinwale - 'Femi' for short."

Akinwale, on his way to Hawaii for the holidays, is now working at Intel. During his time at the Jacobs School, he worked in the IT unit of the ECE department until it was disbanded.

Are you a Jacobs School alum? Tell us what you're doing now!

Two Jacobs School alumni featured in Forbes' 30 Under 30 for 2016

We are incredibly proud of Sarah Guthals and Daniel Lee, two Jacobs School alumni who are featured in this year's 30 Under 30 selection by Forbes Magazine.

ThoughtSTEM cofounder Sarah Guthals

Guthals is a co-founder of ThougthSTEM, a company that focuses on teaching kids how to program, in San Diego and beyond, as well as online. The company has created LearnToMod, a software package that allows students to learn how to code inside of Minecraft. ThoughtSTEM currently offers a free Coursera course to teach educators how to use LearnToMod in their classrooms as a learning tool. The company has also developed CodeSpells, a first-person player video game to teach coding.

Guthals leads ThoughtSTEM's initiatives that connect with schools and teachers, online and in real life. She often chats with educators online to help them customize their programming lessons. She presented a many educational and programming conferences, including Minecon, a Minecraft-centric event that draws crowds every year.

With fellow ThoughtSTEM co-founders and UC San Diego alumni Stephen Forster (computer science) and Lindsey Handley (biochemistry), she co-authored "Minecraft Modding for Kids," in the For Dummies series. Guthals earned her bachelor's, master's and Ph.D. in computer science at UC San Diego.

Daniel Lee with one of the Hush smart earplugs prototypes.

Daniel Lee, nicknamed "Ewok," co-founded Hush Technology, a company that makes smart earplugs with fellow UC San Diego student and alumni Daniel Synn and Daniel Chesong Lee (hence the need for nicknames to distinguish between the three Daniels).

The team raised more than $450,000 for their product on Kickstarter. The three Daniels then turned to making the product a reality. As of December 2015, the company completed a 400 unit preliminary mass production run. Hush plans to deliver its units in January 2016.

Lee, who graduated in 2014 with a bachelor's in mechanical engineering, came up with the idea for the smart earplugs during an entrepreneurship class taught by Teaching Professor Nathan Delson. Lee and the other two Daniels took part in Phases 1 and 2 of the NSF I-Corps program offered at the von Liebig Center here at the Jacobs School.

Computer science alumna wins San Diego County Teacher of the Year award

Photo: San Diego Unified

Huge congratulations to computer science alumna Shirley Parrish Miranda, who won a San Diego County Teacher of the Year award this year. Miranda teaches math and computer science at Morse High School. She is also a fellow with COSMOS, a residential science program for high school students run by the Jacobs School.

Here is the San Diego Union-Tribune on Miranda:

To establish trust in her classroom, Miranda greets students at the door every day, and then thanks them as they exit.

“It is a small gesture that is often overlooked, but is an important component in building relationships and respect with my students, both important aspects of education,” she wrote.

The tradition was inspired by a student who told her she was the only teacher to speak to him the entire year.

“It simultaneously broke my heart and made me happy,” she wrote. “Respect and relationships help close the achievement gap with at-risk students.”

A former software engineer, Miranda works to steer students to pursue an education in science, technology, engineering and math. Her STEM career was inspired by a teacher who encouraged her to enter the science fair.

Miranda assess her students daily, and groups them together for mentoring. She forged a partnership with UC San Diego, which allows her to bring in professors, professionals and students with work in her class.

When teaching computer science, Miranda weaves in relevant issues into the curriculum — including cyberbullying.

Full story here: http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/oct/10/cox-teachers-of-year-2015/

You can also watch Miranda on KUSI News:  http://www.kusi.com/clip/11913386/winners-of-the-san-diego-county-teacher-award

The future of drones: Jacobs School alums weigh in

When Radley Angelo, class of 2015, spent weekends building and flying RC planes and helicopters with his dad and brothers, he never thought he was already building a foundation for his professional life. Angelo went on to become the CEO of Spark Aerial, a systems integration company that focuses on aerial robotics--meaning drones.

His path from freshman at the Jacobs School to CEO is documented in the latest issue of Triton Magazine, the university's alumni publication, in a story titled "Life Among the Drones."

During his time at UC San Diego, Angelo joined Engineers for Exploration, an organization designed to bring cutting-edge technology to the fields of archaeology and exploration. E4E, as it is also known, is led by Jacobs School alum Albert Lin and computer science professor Ryan Kastner. Members investigate digs anywhere from Lake Tahoe, to the jungles of Guatemala, to Mongolia.

Lin needed someone to drive the $20,000 drones he was using to try and find the tomb of Genghis Khan.  He recalls is the Triton story:

We were in a very remote location and had really great access to satellite imagery, but I wanted to be able to get a bird’s-eye view in areas that were more tree covered,” says Lin. “I found Radley, who was really into remote control helicopters, and took him with me.”

 The story also includes a section about the effort of Jacobs School alumnus Jay Guan to improve FAA regulations for drones. He says:

“On the surface, it seems like the FAA is a little squeamish about this,” says Guan. “But from what I’ve seen, the FAA doesn’t have anything against drones or commercial drones. It’s just that safety has always been an overriding concern, and right now there is no good way to ensure that drone operations won’t compromise that.”

Vinculin protein boosts function in the aging heart

Drosophila heart tube and associated structures.
Credit: Anthony Cammarato, Johns Hopkins University

A team of researchers led by bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego provides new insights on how hearts “stay young” and keep functioning over a lifetime despite the fact that most organisms generate few new heart cells. Identifying key gene expression changes that promote heart function as organisms age could lead to new therapy targets that address age-related heart failure.

The researchers found that the contractile function of the hearts of fruit flies is greatly improved in flies that overexpress the protein vinculin, which also accumulates at higher levels in the hearts of aging rats, monkeys and humans. In addition, flies genetically programmed to express elevated levels of vinculin lived significantly longer than normal fruit flies. The new study attributes the longer life of the flies to the improved contractile function of the heart due to the presence of more vinculin, which helps with the structure of the heart and connects heart muscle cells.

This work is published in the June 17 issue of Science Translational Medicine.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death globally and advanced age is a primary risk factor.

“With the average age being projected to increase dramatically in the coming decades, it is more important than ever that we understand and develop therapies for age-related heart failure,” said Adam Engler, a bioengineering professor at UC San Diego and senior author on the paper. “The results of this study implicate vinculin as a future candidate for therapy for people at risk of age-related heart failure.”

For example, if additional research supports these new findings, targeted gene or drug therapies related to vinculin and its network of proteins could be developed to strengthen the hearts of patients suffering from age-related heart failure.

“More than 80 percent of protein groups found in flies, including vinculin network proteins, are similar to those found in rats and monkeys,” said Gaurav Kaushik, lead author on the study. He worked on this project as a bioengineering Ph.D. student in Engler’s lab at UC San Diego and is now a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School. “We chose to focus on the proteins that naturally increase in expression in the aging hearts of flies, rats and monkeys. Since deletion or mutation of these proteins can lead to cardiomyopathy in patients, we wondered if their age-related upregulation was beneficial to the heart. Moreover, would overexpressing them improve heart function?”

Kaushik and colleagues genetically modified fruit flies to overexpress proteins, including vinculin.

Image of the heart (center) running along the abdomen.
Credit: Gaurav Kaushik and Ayla O. Sessions

Remodeling the heart

The human heart is capable of functioning for decades despite the fact that few new heart cells are generated over the course of a lifetime, indicating that alterations in gene expression, known as “remodeling events” help to maintain heart function with age.

“Because renewal of heart cells is limited, maintenance of the heart may depend on remodeling events over time,” said Engler. “Identifying which events are conserved within and between organisms and which result in improved heart function is difficult but could be incredibly valuable.” That’s one of the tasks the researchers set out for themselves. Engler continues, “Within any muscle, the contractile structures become more disordered with age. In heart muscle, vinculin is needed to preserve that structure by holding it together. By performing a kind of open-heart surgery on the flies that overexpressed the protein, we were able to see that the longer life of these flies was due to improved heart muscle function.”

In the study, 50 percent of vinculin-overexpressing flies lived past 11 weeks, to a maximum of 13 weeks. In contrast, 50 percent of control flies only made it to 4 weeks old and none lived past 8 weeks.

“Fruit flies only live for a few weeks which makes them an ideal model for studying aging,” Engler explained.

Check out this video of a beating fly heart:

High school students play a role

Near the beginning of the study, Kaushik and Engler began an outreach effort with a local high school class in San Diego, CA. Kaushik tasked the students with a small pilot study in which they monitored the genetically modified fruit flies over a period of six weeks. Jesse Robinson is a biology teacher at Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs High Tech High Charter School. Each year, Robinson’s junior-level biology class works with local scientists on a project.

“Project based learning is part of the philosophy of the school,” said Robinson. “The goal is to immerse students in authentic learning experiences with adult professionals to prepare them for college and career.”

From left to right: Stephen To, Amy Callahan (math teacher), Hannah Goodwin, Jesse Wade-Robinson, Adam Engler, Madison Clark, and Carl Shefcik

Carl Shefcik, Madison Clark, Hannah Goodwin and Stephen To, now graduating seniors, were all part of Robinson’s class in the Fall of 2013 when the project was assigned.

“We were divided into pairs and assigned two groups of fruit flies – a control group, and a second strain containing one of the mutations that Dr. Engler’s group identified,” said To.

“We didn’t know which group was the control group, and which had the mutation,” recalls Sheficik. “Because of that, we needed to make sure that we kept careful track of which flies died a natural death over a period of six weeks. We found that the group that overexpressed the protein vinculin were outliving the control group by about seven weeks – that’s three times the normal lifespan of a fruit fly!”

The outcome was surprising to Engler and Kaushik, who as a result decided to expand the experiments to focus on vinculin for the study being published in Science Translational Medicine.

“As a teacher, it was neat to see the students tell a story with the data they collected,” said Robinson, who added that this is the first time one of these collaborations was associated with an academic paper. “Dr. Engler was able to ask ‘why’ as a result of the students’ explanation of the data.”

“The project drove my interest in a career in biology,” said Clark, who will attend Cal Poly Pomona in the Fall for biology with an emphasis in microbiology. “It’s really incredible to have participated as a high school student, and even more so to know that the research being done on vinculin could one day change lives. After all, that’s what science is all about.”

Discoveries that change lives increasingly involve engineers.

“Life is complex, and everyone approaches it from a different viewpoint,” said Kaushik. “Engineers may take notice of problems or solutions that a medical doctor may not. We’re needed to accelerate healthcare solutions because we see them with a different set of eyes.”

A Conversation with Pierre Sleiman: Reimagining Farming through Sustainable Frontiers

UC San Diego held its annual Alumni Weekend June 6-7, 2015 and featured a talk by Pierre Sleiman, graduate of Rady School of Business Class of 2013 and UC San Diego Alumni Honoree of 2015. Sleiman is the founder and CEO of Go Green Agriculture, a company dedicated to local farming and sustainability through hydroponic technology with strong family values. 

The event was held in The Basement, a shared campus-wide enterprise operated by Alumni & Community Engagement with a mission to stimulate, encourage and serve the entrepreneurial spirit of UC San Diego undergraduate students by educating them in the startup business process whether it’s evaluating an opportunity, starting a company or joining an existing startup.

Sleiman spoke of his initial entrepreneurial endeavors, from starting his first business to brainstorming in his college dorm room. Because he had to support himself financially in college, Sleiman wanted to create his own company that combined agriculture and technology.

“I always admired successful people and hearing about their stories," said Sleiman. "However, I would always want to know all the nitty-gritty stuff, which people often chose not to speak of. But really, all that stuff is critical to success.” 

So, Sleiman shared some of his own struggles. Though he was regarded as the "networking assassin" by his graduating class, Sleiman strongly disliked public speaking as a kid - imagine a nervous student with heart pounding, palms sweating, terrified. He wanted to improve himself, so he worked hard at becoming more comfortable with public speaking. It wasn't easy - he went through many rejections and moments of embarrassment before he found confidence within himself. Slowly, public speaking became somewhat of an adrenaline rush, and he now encourages everyone to practice as much as possible.

Pierre Sleiman and his father

According to Sleiman, networking is like dating.

"You have to have a purpose, and your entry and exit should be executed with good timing and style," said Sleiman. "More importantly, you have to sell your personality and connect on a human level." 

For example, Sleiman says he focuses on creating a relationship with his customer - whether that be a buyer, investor, or someone just trying to learn more about his company - rather than the selling the business. 

"You're not investing in Go Green," said Sleiman. "You're not investing in this product. You're investing in me."

Beyond networking, the entrepreneur says he loves helping others find their motivations. He suggests looking at what is important to you and what you are willing to lose. 

"Sometimes you find that you have nothing that is important, but that's perfectly okay," said Sleiman. "Many people are still looking for the formula."

The search for that formula can be short for some, such as Zeke Bottorff, a current fifth year transfer and one of the CEOs of the Entrepreneur Challenge. Having grown up in a poor family with his earliest memories taking place in a trailer park where he lived, Bottorff took on his first job at the age of five. 

Bottorff is heavily involved with The Basement, which he describes as a new space for entrepreneurs, a "student-to-student organization serving to help businesses grow and expand." 

Rady School student Mike Hayden is also involved in the organization and describes The Basement as an "inclusive workspace for students to collaborate" that "provides resources for students who are active entrepreneurs." 

Hayden describes Sleiman as a phenomenal leader who can energize just about any situation or any person. "It's no wonder that all he has to do is sell himself," said Hayden.