Wood high-rise tops off at UC San Diego shake table — tests planned for early next year

The tallest building ever to be tested on an earthquake simulator topped off at 10 stories high at UC San Diego's shake table when construction crews and a giant crane flew the last wood panel to the top of the structure on Dec. 6, 2022.

The building is made from cross-laminated timber, or CLT, a material that allows for faster construction and is also sustainable. The goal of the Tallwood project, funded by the National Science Foundation, is to determine how well CLT mid- to high-rise buildings would fare during an earthquake. It is led by the Colorado School of Mines with a team of researchers from universities around the world. You can learn more about the project at the Tallwood website, in this story by the San Diego Union-Tribune and in this podcast episode. 

The building is set to be tested some time early next year, and will undergo several simulated earthquakes, including the equivalent of the 6.7 Northridge earthquake that shook Southern California in 1994.

The Tallwood project is the first large-scale building to be tested on UC San Diego's shake table, one of the two largest in the world, since the table underwent a major $16.9 million upgrade funded by the NSF.  It went from being able to move in one direction – east-west – to three directions – east-west, north-south, up and down, as well as roll, pitch and yaw, three motions in the x, y and z axes performed by airplanes in flight and commonly seen in earthquake motions. The upgrade to one vertical and two horizontal motions and three rotations–known technically as six degrees of freedom–will allow the facility to test structures with an unprecedented degree of accuracy when compared to real earthquake ground motions.

The shake table, opened in 2004, has tested more than 30 structures in that time, and has already made a significant impact. Tests here have resulted in changes to building codes for everything from hospitals, to tall buildings, to roads and bridges.

Find out more about the shake table's impact in this KPBSstory.

Faculty assistant in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering is recognized with Exemplary Employee of the Year Award

 

Lusia Veksler, a faculty assistant in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, has received an Exemplary Employee of the Year award. Veksler is being recognized for her service to the department’s faculty, graduate students and operations. 

Veksler founded and leads a Communication in English program for graduate students in mechanical and aerospace engineering, who are using English as a second language. Her aim has been to encourage greater engagement by students new to the community, who find communicating with other students to be a challenge. Faculty said they found her efforts to be beneficial as these graduate students become more outgoing, assertive, and positive. 

Veksler also provided graduate student assistance and advice for a faculty member’s large research group of about a dozen graduate students when that faculty member ended up unexpectedly in the emergency room. This helped to avoid significant struggles for the entire group.

She supported a PhD student in an mental health crisis emergency by personally speaking with her on the phone no fewer than 10 times and no fewer than five times in person in a two-week period. She also escorted the student to Counseling and Psychological Services (UCSD CAPS) to seek counseling and avoid self-harm. The student has since recovered and returned to graduate studies.

On the operations side, Veksler led an initiative to obtain software for pre-submission plagiarism detection in research-related publications to avoid adverse impact on UC San Diego and our faculty. Over a six-month period, she negotiated on behalf of a group of faculty that grew to include research groups across the Jacobs School of Engineering to obtain a per-user license for iThenticate for $10/year, significantly reduced from an incredibly expensive $100/use fee that some faculty were paying. The software streamlines assessment of plagiarism to a few second effort via an online interface.

Veksler also recorded several brief video training programs for faculty and students to cope with the changeover to SAP Concur travel and expense service, tailoring them to the attention and time-crunched people in these groups. 

She has no doubt saved the university substantial costs and helped the faculty and students under her care adhere to university practices, procedures and policies, researchers said.

Veksler also participates in the department’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusiveness (EDI) Committee as a staff member of her own accord. She is a vocal member of this committee and an invaluable advocate for traditionally underrepresented groups in the department, faculty said.

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

Highlights from the 2016 UC San Diego Center for Visual Computing Retreat

UC San Diego held its first annual Center for Visual Computing Retreat May 20-21, 2016. Faculty members of the Center reviewed the work that has been done since it’s opening in 2015. The Center was created to find innovative solutions in computer vision and computer graphics. The retreat included 50+ participants, including 19 visitors from nine industrial sponsors.

At the retreat, Ravi Ramamoorthi, Director of the Center and Ronald L. Graham professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department, and Jacobs School of Engineering Dean Albert P. Pisano gave opening remarks and introduced the Center.

Following opening remarks, Ramamoorthi and other UC San Diego faculty members from the Computer Science and Engineering Department and Calit2 gave updates on their research:

Thomas A. DeFanti, R​esearch Scientist, Calit2
Cameras for Virtual Reality Displays

Ravi Ramamoorthi, PhD, ​Director, Center for Visual Computing | Professor, CSE
Sampling and Reconstruction of High­Dimensional Visual Appearance

Zhuowen Tu, PhD, P​rofessor, Cognitive Science, CSE
Deep Supervision for Deep Learning: Training, Regularization, and Multi­Scale Learning

Jürgen Schulze, PhD, A​ssociate Research Scientist, Computer Science
Virtual Reality with Head Mounted Displays

The majority of the first day consisted of student presentations on past and ongoing work, as well as a poster session in the evening.

Computer science and engineering professor Henrik Wann Jensen also spoke on the challenges presented by light transport simulation.

Following more student presentations on Day 2, Ramamoorthi, professor of computer science Jurgen Schulze and cognitive science professor Zhuowen Tu served on a panel featuring a discussion about 3D and VR imaging.

The retreat concluded with feedback from sponsors, including Cubic, which posted a blog post about the event.

Founders Celebration 2015

Join us as we commemorate the day UC San Diego was founded in November 1960. Celebrate the ways in which our scholarship, community and commitment have created a force for positive change in our region, our nation and our world.

Learn more at founders.ucsd.edu. Follow this hashtag on Twitter: #ucsdfounders

What is Founders Celebration?

The annual Founders Celebration commemorates the day UC San Diego was founded in November 1960. Faculty, staff, students, alumni and friends are invited to celebrate the many ways in which our scholarship, community and commitment have created a force for positive change in our region, our nation and our world.

Why have an annual Founders Celebration?

The common goal of the various Founders Celebration events is to engage the campus and community, as well as build our base of advocates and donors, by:

• Underscoring the impact of the campus on local, national and global communities to rally support for the campus;
• Sharing exciting research or work produced by UC San Diego staff, graduate students, faculty and leadership;
• Bringing the campus community together to foster camaraderie among our faculty, staff and students;
• Honoring outstanding supporters of UC San Diego and distinguished faculty through the presentation of the Chancellor’s Medals and Revelle Medals; and
• Raising the external visibility of UC San Diego.

Who will be honored during the celebration?

Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla will present three distinguished individuals with the Revelle Medal at Founders Day on November 13, and will recognize the support of three multifaceted leaders with the Chancellor’s Medal at Founders Dinner on November 14. We are truly grateful for the support of these remarkable individuals, foundations and corporations.

• Chancellor’s Medal Recipients

  The Chancellor’s Medal is one of the highest honors bestowed by UC San Diego to honor exceptional service in support of the university’s mission.
  • Carol Vassiliadis
  • The Family of Chris and Warren Hellman
  • Qualcomm Incorporated

• Revelle Medal Recipients

  The Revelle Medal recognizes current and former faculty members whose sustained and extraordinary service to the campus advances UC San Diego’s mission of exceptional teaching, research, service and patient care.
  • Cecil Lytle (Department of Music)
  • Hugh “Bud” Mehan (Department of Sociology)
  • Susan Shirk (School of Global Policy and Strategy)

Who will be Founders Symposium speakers?

The following faculty will be featured presenting TED-style talks related to the campus’ grand research themes.

• Understanding Cultures and Addressing Disparities in Society
  • Angela Booker, Ph.D., Department of Communication
  • Jennifer Burney, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, School of Global Policy and Strategy
  • Craig Callender, Ph.D., Department of Philosophy
• Exploring the Basis of Human Knowledge, Learning, and Creativity
  • Alan Daly, Ph.D., Department of Education Studies
  • Paul Niehaus, Ph.D., Department of Economics
  • Emily Roxworthy, Ph.D., Department of Theatre and Dance

What are the Academic Senate Faculty Research Lectures, and who are the lecturers?

Concurrent with Founders Celebration, the Academic Senate recognizes two faculty whose research has made a significant contribution to the advancement of knowledge They will present a lecture topic of their choice.

• Yen Espiritu, Ph.D, Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies
  When: Monday, Nov. 4, 2015, 3–5 p.m.
  Where: Faculty Club, Atkinson Pavilion
  RSVP by Oct. 28, 2015 to awelch@ucsd.edu
• Anita Raj, Ph.D., Professor, Division of Global Public Health, Department of Medicine
  When: Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2015, 3–5 p.m.
  Where: Faculty Club, Atkinson Pavilion
  RSVP by Oct. 28, 2015 to awelch@ucsd.edu

Q&A with the IDEA Student Center

During the last Jacobs School Student Services Open House, I sat down for a quick Q&A with a few of the staff at the IDEA Student Center (Center for Inclusion, Diversity, Excellence, and Advancement). 

Not only as staff members, but also as mentors, these extraordinary people are your resources - meet Gennie, Walter and Victor:

Gennie Miranda

What is your role at the IDEA Student Center?

I’m the assistant director. There are specific student programs I also take charge of, such as the Jacobs Undergraduate Mentor Program (JUMP), the IDEA Scholars Summer PrEP, and the tutoring program.

One of the events I help to organize each year is the Jacobs School Student Services Open House. In addition to new incoming students, a lot continuing students can benefit from attending by partaking in programs and taking advantage of what is available according to their needs. We want students to receive help they need, which may be available beyond engineering offices, for example, if a student is interested in studying abroad.

What should students know about you?

I love working with students. That’s why I’m in higher education. A lot of it is because I learn a lot from them, and I learn a lot about myself - especially in being a part of their college experience from freshman year to graduating. Hopefully I may be helpful in their journeys in some way.

Do you have a favorite mantra or quote?

I have a few. It’s hard to choose. One thing I always tell students is that things will always work out for the best. Students are always anxious about one thing or another, especially when they have decisions to make. Whatever choice you make, it’s always going to work out. Because you made that choice, you’re going to have to make it work. They always look at me, as if they’re thinking “Is that the best you can do? You can’t give me anything more specific? Tell me what to do, like really.” But for the most part, things do work out.

Walter Torrence

What is your role at the IDEA Student Center?

I am the Interim Student Life Coordinator. In essence, I am the advisor for the Triton Engineering Student Council (TESC) and most of the student organizations that fall under TESC.

What should students know about you?

I’m extremely fun-loving. I’m a big goofy big kid at heart, extremely approachable. They can come to me with anything. Also, I am very passionate about what I do, about student success, student involvement. I will bend over backwards for any student as long as they are willing to bend over backwards for themselves.

Do you have a favorite quote or mantra?

One of mine is a quote by Frederick Douglas. “Without struggle, there is no progress.” In essence, that says, you’re going to go through a lot of hard times, you’re going to go through a lot of challenges, but if it wasn’t for those challenges, you won’t become a stronger individual.

Victor Betts

What is your role at the IDEA Student Center?
Student Life & Diversity Coordinator. I work and advise the three diversity engineering student organizations: National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), and the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) at UC San Diego.

What should students know about you?
I'm good at being a sound board when it comes to ideas and will get you to think through your thoughts by identifying possible gaps or pitfalls. I value equity, diversity, and inclusion, so I help students make those connections with engineering.

Do you have a favorite quote or mantra?
"Failing to plan is planning to fail" and "No lollygagging"!

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.”

UC San Diego Student Takes on Challenge: Making Graphene for the Market

UC San Diego NanoEngineering Ph.D. candidate 
Aliaksandr (Alex) Zaretski

A University of California, San Diego graduate student has found a way to use mass-produce graphene, an allotrope of carbon that is one atom-thick – and his technology is getting noticed by investors and venture capital firms.

The large-scale graphene can be used for applications such as flexible electronics and water desalination membranes.

“Graphene is more conductive than any metal we know of and it’s 200 times stronger than steel because of the way the atoms bond to form a hexagonal pattern (think of chicken wire) with a cloud of free electrons hovering above and below it,” said UC San Diego NanoEngineering Ph.D. candidate Aliaksandr (Alex) Zaretski.

According to Zaretski,no one has been able to produce graphene on a large-enough scale for industrial applications. 

There are ways to do it – graphene can be grown on a copper substrate and pried off, but only after a few hours in an acid bath.

As an intern at Cornell University under the mentorship of graphene expert Paul McEuen, Zaretski had an idea. What if graphene could be liberated from its substrate by overcoming the adhesion strength with a greater force?

Determined to pursue this research project, Zaretski arrived at UC San Diego as a NanoEngineering master’s student. Under the supervision of Darren Lipomi, professor of NanoEngineering, Zaretski developed a method in which graphene is grown on a copper substrate and overlaid with a sheet of nickel. Because graphene adheres better to nickel than to copper, the entire graphene single-layer can be easily removed and remains intact over large areas.

“The layer of nickel still needs to be removed using an acid bath, but it takes only a few seconds, rather than a few hours,” said Zaretski. “This method is much more cost effective and time efficient for mass production.”

“Once I had enough evidence that my idea was feasible, I began looking for help to commercialize my technology,” said Zaretski. “I was interning at the Torrey Pines Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) at the time, and one of the senior scientists recommended that I participate in a pitch competition called the UC San Diego Entrepreneur Challenge. That was really the beginning.”

At that time, Zaretski was looking to transfer into the nanonengineering Ph.D. program at UC San Diego. He joined Lipomi’s lab, where he was encouraged to explore his ideas.

"Alex is full of creativity," said Lipomi. "He is the kind of student a faculty member encounters only rarely in his or her career. I have been happy to support Alex's research and entrepreneurship, and his is the first startup originating from our laboratory."

Zaretski founded GrollTex, a company that seeks to commercialize a new method of fabricating large-area single-atom monolayer sheets of transparent graphene.

After winning the UC San Diego Entrepreneurship Challenge, Zaretski caught the attention of Rosibel Ochoa, Senior Executive Director, Entrepreneurism and Leadership Programs at the Jacobs School of Engineering, who suggested he apply to the Southern California Clean Energy Technology Acceleration Program at the von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism.

“It was a really eye-opening experience,” said Zaretski. “I not only had great peers in the program, I also had great mentors who propelled my business idea to the state of a viable high-tech startup”

With the funding he received through the program and the Entrepreneurship Challenge, combined with research funding from Lipomi, Zaretski was able to purchase a reactor to grow graphene on copper and demonstrate a new method of transferring it to flexible substrates. Last year, among several other graduate students from the Jacobs School of Engineering, Zaretski was awarded the prestigious three-year National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship to further his graphene related research.

Things took off – Zaretski and Lipomi patented the technology through UC San Diego’s Technology Transfer Office and obtained an exclusive license. From there, he went on to form a core team by hiring a CEO – Jeff Draa, President of Tech Coast Angels. Grolltex has also received pre-seed investment from the UC San Diego affiliated Triton Technology Fund.

GrollTex wins first prize California Dreamin’ Competition

Aliaksandr (Alex) Zaretski at Chapman University’s 4^th 
Annual California Dreamin’ Business Plan Competition in April

Zaretski’s startup took home $25,000 and first prize at Chapman University’s 4^th Annual California Dreamin’ Business Plan Competition in April.

An invitation-only event, California Dreamin’ is a nationwide entrepreneurially-focused higher education competition. This year’s competition took place April 24-25, 2015 at Chapman University’s campus in Orange, CA. It featured 28 schools competing for prize money and potential equity investment, along with connections to venture capital firms.

GrollTex beat out 27 other companies showcasing everything from smartphone apps to new drugs for the top spot in the competition.

The future of GrollTex

After representing UC San Diego in Chapman University’s 4^th Annual California Dreamin’ Business Plan Competition, Zaretski hopes to continue networking with the potential investors and venture capital firms that were in attendance.

“We’re currently talking with companies about lab space and strategic partnerships,” said Zaretski.

Zaretski says none of this would be possible if it weren’t for the unique culture at UC San Diego that fosters entrepreneurship.

“That’s one of the reasons I chose UC San Diego,” said Zaretski. “I wanted to go to a graduate school where my ideas would not only be accepted, but embraced and nurtured. It’s because of programs and centers such as von Liebig and mentors such as Rosibel Ochoa that GrollTex has come this far.”

Using Bitcoins to Make Illegal Purchases Online May Not Be Anonymous After All

Computer science Ph.D. student Sarah Meiklejohn (pictured) is causing a major stir in the world of cryto-currency and black market transactions. 

She’s part of a team at UC San Diego and George Mason University investigating the Bitcoin market and cybercrime.  Meiklejohn has become an expert on tracking Bitcoin transactions which, on the surface, appear to be anonymous. But the team found a way to link transactions to Bitcoin merchants and services – potentially undermining one major use of Bitcoin: funding online purchases of illegal products. 

In July, Meiklejohn helped cybercrime expert Brian Krebs verify that users had deposited a total of two bitcoins (~$200) into a purse on the Silk Road black market to purchase heroin that would be sent to Krebs’ home. (Krebs was able to alert the police before the heroin arrived at his home.) 

More recently, a columnist at Forbes magazine asked Meiklejohn to see if she could trace an order for small amounts of marijuana from three different Bitcoin-based online black markets. Meiklejohn followed “digital breadcrumbs” on Silk Road and had little trouble tracing the drug buys back to the Forbes writer using a clustering analysis and detecting a specific point in Bitcoin’s blockchain record of transactions – linking the user to the drug buy. The Forbes columnist, Andy Greenberg, quotes Meiklejohn as saying 

There “are ways of using Bitcoin privately. But if you’re a casual Bitcoin user, you’re probably not hiding your activity very well.” 

Not surprisingly, the findings have hit paydirt on Slashdot, and Bloomberg Businessweek noted that a new paper by Meiklejohn and her colleagues “argues that the network’s increased reliance on a few large accounts makes user identities less secure.” 

That paper, “A Fistful of Bitcoins: Characterizing Payments Among Men with No Names,” will be presented at ACM Internet Measurement Conference in Barcelona Oct. 24, but an advance version is now available.

Meiklejohn’s co-authors at UC San Diego include undergraduate Marjori Pomarole, grad student Grant Jordan, Center for Networked Systems research scientist (and Jacobs SChool alum) Kirill Levchenko, former computer science postdoc Damon McCoy (now teaching at George Mason), as well as computer science professors Geoff Voelker and Stefan Savage.

UC San Diego Triton Day

April 6 is the second annual Triton Day at UC San Diego! For newly admitted students, Triton Day serves as a chance to learn what it means to be a Triton, and an opportunity to accept UC San Diego’s offer of admission. For current students, staff, and faculty, the event provides a rare opportunity to rediscover the excitement that is UC San Diego, even if you are on campus every day.

Activities planned in and around the heart of campus are scheduled to take place from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and include live entertainment in the Price Center Plaza, the “Charting the Course” College Planning and Information Session at the Conrad Prebys Concert Hall and Thurgood Marshall College’s 35^th annual Cultural Celebration.

We hope you will experience the fun April 6 – and also help us promote Triton Day!  Please see the web blurb and bug that you can post on your website, add to online communications and more!

Join us! We invite the campus community—including YOU—to share your Triton pride on Saturday, April 6. To find out more, go to tritonday.ucsd.edu.