IDEA Scholar: Juan Maldonado

Juan Maldonado has had his eyes set on the stars since he was a young boy. Any time in the library was spent in the scifi section.

“That’s where my mind was-- the future,” Maldonado said. “I liked learning about these new technologies coming out, especially rockets. I was really interested in rockets.”

After watching SpaceX launches, and particularly the landing of the Falcon 9, Maldonado decided he wanted to work on rockets. As an aerospace engineer, he had a chance to do that through the Rocket Propulsion Lab and Triton Rocket Club. As an undergraduate, he also conducted research in Professor Nicholas Boechler’s lab.

After graduating from UC San Diego with a degree in aerospace engineering, Maldonado is pursuing a PhD in Aeronatics and Astronautics at Purdue University, while also preparing to apply to be an astronaut.

“I’ll be learning another language—probably Russian—and learning how to fly planes and things like that,” Maldonado said. “That’s something I’ve been interested in since I’ve been a little kid, was applying to be an astronaut.”

Maldonado’s decision to study at UC San Diego was largely influenced by the IDEA Engineering Center. Their overnight program “was awesome,” and the summer engineering program was really helpful, too.

“One of the big things for IDEA that I really appreciate was just getting to know other people and developing friendships with people in my major that I see all the time,” he said. “I still have those friends now which has been super awesome.”

The summer program in particular was so beneficial that he served as a peer facilitator for classes behind him.

His advice to students is to give research a try if you have the opportunity. You never know where it might take you.

“Before I did research I was pretty set on going into industry,” Maldonado said. “Whenever someone brought up grad school I was like ‘Oh nah, I don’t want to do more school,’ because I didn’t know what research was like. But once I did it I fell in love with it-- having to come up with creative solutions, the whole process of doing research. That’s what convinced me to go to grad school-- I didn’t know I wanted to do that until doing research just last summer.

For people out there who don’t know or who might be in the same boat as me and think they don’t want to, if they have the opportunity I’d really recommend they do research because they might be like me and really end up liking it a lot.”

IDEA Scholar: Jasmine Chiang

IDEA Scholar Jasmine Chiang wasn’t sold on electrical engineering when she first learned about the field—it seemed like a lot of chips. But when she found out that electrical engineering underpins how all forms of electronic communication happen, she was hooked.

“All wireless information being sent, all of that needs to be done through signal image processing, and that’s my specialization now,” Chiang said. “It’s such an important part of our lives, to be able to have signals processed efficiently so we can actually send them in wireless communications.. I want to ensure that the technology for people to communicate around the world and even to outer space continues to be revolutionized.”

After graduation, Chiang will return to UC San Diego in the fall to earn a master’s degree in electrical engineering with a focus on signal image processing to make that happen.

“When I first learned about signal image processing I was thinking about its use in music—a lot of it requires filtering and understanding of signal processing,” Chiang said. “So I was honestly hoping I could pursue that. But I recognize now that I’m taking all these classes and meeting all these people and realizing there’s so much more I can do. I’m hoping a masters will help me narrow it down and focus in on what I want to be pursuing as a specific job.”

In addition to being an IDEA Scholar, Chiang was involved in the IDEA Center’s JUMP mentor program and was a peer facilitator at the Summer Engineering Institute for two summers, after experiencing how beneficial the program was.

“I knew when I did my summer program, back when it was Summer PrEP, that I really wanted to be a leader for future classes to inspire them to stay in engineering.”

She also studied abroad at King’s College i London, and was vice president external of the ECE Undergraduate Student Council and was on the ECE Day committee board in joint with the other ECE student organizations.

IDEA Scholar: Cindy Ayala

For mechanical engineering student Cindy Ayala, the IDEA Center and IDEA Scholars program knew what she needed before even she did.

“Through the Summer Engineering Institute, they gave us resources before we knew we needed them,” Ayala said. “In the same way, they gave us mentors before we knew what questions to ask. But then when the questions started to come up, we knew where to go and what resources to look for.”

For Ayala, those questions centered around graduate school.

“I was leaning towards going into industry when I first got here and didn’t think I’d be applying to graduate programs my freshman year, but as I got further along I realized how cool it is to be able to do research at a university,” Ayala said.

She’s starting a joint PhD program in bioengineering through UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco this fall.

To be fair, Ayala did get to do some pretty cool research. She worked in Professor Joanna McKittrick’s lab her freshman year, and then conducted research for Professor Juan Carlos Lasheras, studying how cells migrate in 3D spaces. For her senior design project, Ayala and her teammates developed an automated blood smear system in collaboration with the UC San Diego Medical School, to make it easier to analyze patients’ blood samples.

Her advice to students?

“There are so many resources available through the IDEA center,” Ayala said. “There’s always scholarship opportunities, events and such a large network of mentorship. It’s this very large network of people there to help you.”

IDEA Scholar: Jose Manuel Rodriguez

Jose Manuel Rodriguez knew he wanted to be an engineer since he was a young boy. He grew up helping his dad fix things around the house, and enjoyed the sense of accomplishment that came with restoring function to cars, doors, sinks etc.

“I always kind of treated school as a game,” Rodriguez said. “I was always trying to get the high scores. I didn’t like seeing anything other than an A. I liked the feeling of doing well in classes. That’s what kind of motivated me.”

A first generation college student, Rodriguez was so motivated to go to and succeed in college that he skipped his senior prom to attend the IDEA Center’s Breakfast with the Dean and learn what the Jacobs School had to offer.

“I said, ‘You know, I’d rather decide about my future than have this one night of fun. I’ll see my friends, they’ll be there. So I went to Breakfast with the Dean and Triton Day rather than go to my high school prom.”

That decision paid off. Rodriguez decided to attend UC San Diego, and is graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering, having worked on jet engines and even helped restore motion to a young boy’s arms.

Rodriguez, who grew up in Fontana, was also a Chancellor’s Scholar. The scholarship funds he was awarded through that program helped relieve a lot of stress about paying for college, and allowed him to get involved in things like the Rocket Propulsion Lab, where he worked to design a biofuel jet engine.

Rodriguez said his senior design project was one of his most memorable projects and learning experiences. He and a team of three other engineering students designed a motorized brace in 10 weeks that would allow a five-year-old who has a rare virus to move his arms for the first time in three years.

“It really didn’t hit me until we were talking to the prosthetist who said ‘You’re making a really big impact in this child’s life,” Rodriguez said. “I feel like it’s really interesting the way engineering is basically the medium between science and society. You’re that medium, trying to make science practical in a way that impacts real life.

As an IDEA Scholar, Rodriguez participated in the Summer Engineering Institute—at that time a five day college preparatory program that has since been extended to a month-- which he said not only helped prepare him for classes, but helped him form a supportive community of friends on campus.

“The IDEA Scholars program really helped me because there were people that come from my background. You relate to them more. And they understand what you’re going though and you understand what they’re going through and the type of struggles they’re having as well. It helps having people to turn to who are like me.”

Rodriguez advises prospective students to not be afraid of asking questions or asking for help.

“One of the troubles I had was asking for help my first year. I’ve always been a person who went through everything alone, never had help from anybody. But then my first year I kind of struggled a bit with classes—not too much but to the point that I was frustrated that everything wasn’t clicking right away. I’d spend time trying to figure things out by myself, and as soon as I made that leap of asking questions to a TA or something-- because that was totally foreign to me, asking questions—that made such a difference. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and be curious about things. Put yourself out there.”

Shirley Meng among finalists of the prestigious Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists

University of California San Diego nanoengineering professor Ying Shirley Meng is among the Finalists of the 2019 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists. She is one of 31 of the nation’s rising stars in science who will compete for three Blavatnik National Laureate Awards in the categories of Chemistry, Physical Sciences & Engineering, and Life Sciences. Each of the three 2019 National Laureates will win $250,000—the world’s largest unrestricted prize for early-career scientists.

Ying Shirley Meng

Ying Shirley Meng

Shirley Meng, a materials scientist and engineering professor at UC San Diego, utilizes her pioneering research in creating novel techniques to measure, control and optimize energy storage materials from the atomic scale to the system level. Dr. Meng’s work manipulating the functional interfaces in energy storage devices has led to higher energy, more powerful, safer and longer life batteries. Her work aims to provide solutions to humankind’s grand challenge for abundant, clean and sustainable energy.

Meng is faculty director of the UC San Diego Sustainable Power and Energy Center. She directs the Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion in the Department of NanoEngineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. 

Read the full press release from The Blavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences.  

Now in its 13th year, the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists recognize the past accomplishments and the future promise of the most-talented faculty-rank scientists and engineers aged 42 years and younger at America’s top academic and research institutions. This year, the Blavatnik National Awards received an unprecedented 343 nominations from 169 academic and research centers across 44 states – a record in all three categories. The three 2019 National Laureates, chosen from the 31 Finalists, will be announced June 26.

Read the full story here.

Computer Science PhD student earns 2019 Google PhD Fellowship

Congratulations to UC San Diego computer science PhD student Tiancheng (Kevin) Sun, who has been awarded a 2019 Google PhD Fellowship.

Sun’s research interests include computer graphics and computational photography. He is advised by UC San Diego computerscience professor Ravi Ramamoorthi, who directs the UC San Diego Center for Visual Computing.

In 2017, Sun was named winner in the undergraduate category of the ACM Student Research Competition at the 44th SIGGRAPH Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques. He also won first place in the undergraduate category of the 2018 ACM Student Research Competition.

Statement from Google: Google is pleased to announce the recipients of the Google PhD Fellowships for 2019. These awards have been presented to exemplary PhD students in computer science and related disciplines. We have given these students unique fellowships to acknowledge their contributions to their areas of specialty and provide funding for their education and research. We look forward to working closely with them as they continue to become leaders in their respective fields.

At UC San Diego, Sun is the recipient of a Jacobs Fellowship, a prestigious fellowship for incoming Ph.D. students to the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

HackXX 2019: code – the future of women in STEM

By Xochitl Rojas-Rocha

Students swing into gear an hour into the hackathon.
Photos by Xochitl Rojas-Rocha

On Saturday, April 6^th, young coders from universities across southern California gathered for the third annual HackXX, a 24-hour, women-centric hackathon at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego. HackXX has doubled in size each year since its inaugural event in 2017. This year, more than 200 students bundled themselves into the university’s Price Center, clustered around their laptops, and got to work.

Striving for Change

Jiazhen Rong, a fourth-year bioengineering and biotechnology student, said that while no one ever actively discouraged her from pursuing computer science, the way the field was portrayed left her with the impression that coding was “for boys.” That lack of representation took its toll, at least for a while; Rong didn’t explore programming until her junior year in college.

At HackXX, she has sensed none of that former pressure. “I really feel like this event values women,” she said. She and her two teammates, Haihao Sun and Sid Limaye, created an application that allows the user to combine an original photo file with a famous art piece for a fun, new image. Their idea, they said, was to build on what Snapchat achieves with simple filters.

Rong’s teammates, Sun and Limaye, were two of many young men who participated in the hackathon. The event is open to students of all gender identities, backgrounds and disciplines. Attendees traveled from multiple universities throughout California, some with project ideas and teams, some without. The only requirement was that they treat their fellow coders with respect.

“The goal of TESC is to empower engineering students to grow and succeed throughout their college lives and careers. We constantly seek new opportunities and ways to achieve that goal, and celebrating womxn in STEM at HackXX fits perfectly with our mission,” said Colin Feeney, president of UC San Diego’s Triton Engineering Student Council (TESC). TESC hosted the 2019 HackXX.

C: \>code -- The History and Future of Women in STEM

Students present their project, "Safehouse," to the judges.

After what was literally a sleepless night for some, the hackers had their projects judged according to general performance and presentation. In first place were cognitive science freshman Yana Pyryalina (UC San Diego) and computer science senior Sara Kazemi (CSU Monterey Bay), with a project called “The Callout.” The two coders designed a virtual reality simulation to train and prepare women to respond to misogynistic microaggressions in the work place. In one simulation, a male supervisor encouraged the viewer to “wear [her] hair down” and “wear something tight” for an upcoming meeting with potential investors. The simulation then offered the viewer a series of responses, all focused on drawing the supervisor’s attention to how his comments made his employee feel.

In second place, a team of coders created a role-playing game called “Maze Rescue.” With cute, Undertale-esque graphics, the game challenges the player to save their friend, a female researcher who has been kidnapped, along with her work, by a mad scientist. The player must solve a maze filled with trivia questions on notable women in STEM to save their friend.

The third place winner was “Safehouse,” an application that sends out a call for assistance when a woman feels like she’s in an unsafe situation. The application is volunteer-based, with the team sending out requests for people to sign their homes or apartments up as “safehouses” where a woman can take shelter until help arrives. The team was inspired by UC San Diego’s safety escort system, which calls a Community Service Officer (CSO) to a student’s location from sunset to 4:00 a.m. daily if they feel unsafe.

HackXX sponsor Northrop Grumman challenged students to find a
way to program a small robot car and successfully remove a hair tie
 from its stand without knocking the stand over, and transport
it through a maze.

While not every team placed, others did reach the final round of judging or took home awards from HackXX sponsors such as Northrop Grumman and iTradeNetwork. One such team won “Best Women in Hack” for devising an application that helps pregnant women identify foods that they can eat, and assists them in planning meals in advance. Another finalist team created a virtual reality simulation of a women’s history museum. By using the virtual reality headset to interact with different exhibits, a visitor can travel to the moon to learn about Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, or transport to the cockpit of aviator Amelia Earhart to listen to a recording describing her life and achievements.

For HackXX co-directors Alice Lee, a fourth-year cognitive science student, and Bilguun Bulgan, a graduating computer science student, that moment was more than half a year in the making.

“It’s been really rewarding to see everything come to life, and to see how involved all of our team members are,” said Lee. Some students, she said, see hackathons as just a way to connect with corporations and find a job. With HackXX, it’s different. “Everyone on this team actually cares about what HackXX stands for, and I thought that was really cool.”