Nominate Your Product for CONNECT’s Most Innovative New Product Awards

Every year, new and innovative products emerge from the Jacobs School – this year alone, we’ve seen everything from smart earplugs to a toy robot that teaches kids to code!

Our close partner, CONNECT, an organization that helps create and scale great companies in the technology and life sciences sector, has found a way to recognize some of the great innovations coming out of San Diego with their Most Innovative New Product Awards. The Most Innovative New Product Awards are to San Diego’s innovation industry what the Academy Awards are to the movie industry. CONNECT’s largest and most prestigious event attracts more than 700 of the region’s top business leaders, researchers and capital providers. UC San Diego born and bred Electrozyme LLC (now biolinq) won this award last year for their ProFit SE Real-Time Sweat Electrolyte Sensor – and we want YOU to nominate your product! But hurry, the deadline is fast approaching!

Here are the details:

Nominations Accepted: June 1, 2015 – July 27, 2015

Eligibility Criteria:

•          The product must have been developed in the San Diego or Baja region
•          The product must have been first introduced between March 2014 – August 2015 and never nominated for this award before
•          The product must have generated revenue from sales (except for free mobile apps)

Product Award Categories:

•          Aerospace, Security, & Cyber Technologies
•          Cleantech
•          Communications & IT
•          Life Science Diagnostics & Research Tools
•          Mobile Apps
•          Pharmaceutical Drugs & Medical Devices
•          Software & Digital Media
•          Sport & Active Life Style Technologies

Program Contact: Petra Stegmann, pstegmann@connect.org or 858.964.1315

Save the Date – December 1, 2015! Registration for the 2015 MIP Awards Dinner coming soon.

DATE: Thursday, December 1, 2015

LOCATION: Hyatt Regency La Jolla at Aventine

3777 La Jolla Village Drive

San Diego, CA 92122

TIME: 5:00pm – 8:30pm

You won’t want to miss this the chance to compete for the exclusive title and honor of being named one of the most innovative new products in San Diego. Click here to go to CONNECT's website and nominate your product today!

Krstic Wins Chestnut Textbook Prize

Miroslav Krstic, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and associate vice chancellor for research at UC San Diego, has received the triennial Chestnut Textbook Prize awarded by the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC).

His book, Boundary Control of PDEs, earned the following citation from the award committee: “This textbook makes the difficult subject of control of partial differential equations accessible to engineering students for the first time. It fills a decades-long need in control education. It covers, at an introductory level, a wide spectrum of physically relevant topics. The clarity and thoroughness of the presentation have already earned it a broad audience and its impact is already exceptional and will continue to grow within and beyond the field of control engineering.”

Krstic also serves as Director of the Cymer Center for Control Systems and Dynamics at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. 

He received the award in Cape Town, South Africa, in late August. The award honors the memory of Harold Chestnut, the founding president of IFAC (1957), president of IEEE (1973), and member of National Academy of Engineering (1974).

IFAC, founded in 1957, is a multinational federation of national member organizations representing the engineering and scientific societies concerned with automatic control.

The federation promotes the science and technology of control systems.

MAE Alumnus, Douglas C. Hofmann, Earns Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers

Douglas C. Hofmann, an alumnus from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering is developing bulk metallic glasses to be used as shielding for spacecraft to protect them against orbital debris impacts. For this and related work, Hofmann  has been named a recipient of a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). This is the highest honor bestowed by the United States Government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers.

Douglas C. Hofmann

Hofmann earned a B.S. (’02) and M.S. (’03) in mechanical engineering from UC San Diego. He was advised by Kenneth Vecchio, now Professor and Chair in the NanoEngineering Department at UC San Diego. Hofmann went on to earn a M.S. and Ph.D. in Materials Science at Caltech before founding the Metallurgy Laboratory at NASA JPL in 2012, where he works as a Principle Investigator. Hofmann also teaches at Caltech, where he has a Visiting Associate appointment.

Hofmann is being honored “for his innovative research in metal-matrix composites for future NASA missions.”

In December 2012, Hofmann gave a seminar at UC San Diego on related work entitled “Amorphous Metals (AMs) & Composites for NASA Spacecraft Hardware; Science & Applications.” The abstract for that talk is below:

The current talk focuses on the science and applications of new materials for future NASA spacecraft, with emphasis on how real-world problems drive materials development. Among the materials that will be discussed are amorphous metals and bulk metallic glass composites. These materials have been developed for use as low-temperature gears for a future Mars rover, orbital debris shielding for spacecraft and satellites, net-shaped mirrors, cellular structures and optical mounts. In each application, a new material or manufacturing process enables a function that cannot be obtained through traditional techniques. Collaboration between Dr. Hofmann’s and Professor Vecchio’s groups on some of these materials will be discussed. The talk will also contain details on an upcoming NASA spaceflight experiment to the International Space Station in 2016 to perform fundamental physical science research using the new Materials Science Research Rack.

Images from hypervelocity impact testing experiments performed by Hofmann and colleagues at NASA. "We have been developing bulk metallic glasses to be used as shielding for spacecraft to protect them against orbital debris impacts. This is the same problem highlighted in the recent movie 'Gravity', Hoffman wrote in a recent email. 

The Presidential Early Career Awards, according to a statement released on the White House website, embody the high priority the Obama Administration places on producing outstanding scientists and engineers to advance the Nation’s goals, tackle grand challenges, and contribute to the American economy.

“The impressive achievements of these early-stage scientists and engineers are promising indicators of even greater successes ahead,” President Obama said. “We are grateful for their commitment to generating the scientific and technical advancements that will ensure America’s global leadership for many years to come.”

Congrats ECE Prof Sujit Dey / IEEE Fellow

Electrical engineering professor Sujit Dey

Congratulations to electrical engineering professor Sujit Dey, who is one of 62 IEEE Computer Society members and associates to be elevated to IEEE Fellow status in 2014 "for contributions to the design and testing of low-power systems and system-on-chips."

Dey leads the Mobile Systems Design Lab in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. He is faculty director of the von Liebig Entrepreneurism Center. The team in his lab is currently doing R&D in a field that could be the focus of future commercialization efforts: cloud-based mobile gaming.

Dey is also a longtime participant in the UC San Diego Division of Calit2, now known as the Qualcomm Institute. 

The IEEE Fellow honor recognizes unusual distinction in the profession. Dey was a co-PI (with PI Ramesh Rao) on the Ericsson- and UC Discovery Grant-funded Adaptive Systems project launched in 2002, prior to founding Ortiva Wireless in 2004. Ortiva was subsequently acquired by Israel-based Allot Communications in early 2012. 

Dey was awarded a proof-of-concept grant from the von Liebig Center in 2004 to create a prototype that became the core technology to launch Ortiva Wireless, which enables proactive management of mobile video and rich media content delivery. Dey said the von Liebig Center helped him get the funding he needed to hire students, develop an advanced prototype that could be presented to potential customers and investors, and to offer valuable advice in the business development and technology transfer process.

Two Electrical Engineering Profs Land Awards from Yahoo! Labs

Two electrical engineering professors from the Jacobs School of Engineering, Gert Lanckriet and Nuno Vasconcelos, have won spots in the 2013 Yahoo! Faculty Research and Engagement Program (FREP). 

Check out the full list of awardees at the Yahoo! Labs Faculty Research and Engagement Program website.

This program funds help academics across the globe collaborate with Yahoo! research scientists on new, exciting internet research studies and experiments.

Lanckriet and Vasconcelos, from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC San Diego, are two of 27 recipients from 24 universities in 7 countries were selected based on their areas of science and interest to Yahoo!.

A summary of Lanckriet’s project is below.

Machine Learning with Highly Unstructured Multimedia DataAn increasingly important aspect of information in today’s world is that it is highly unstructured and heterogeneous. For example, a search for “miss world 2013” yields fundamentally different modes of information about the topic via news articles, blogs, videos, pictures etc.  While there are some commonalities in the information provided in these modalities (i.e., they are about the beauty pageant), the nature of information differs widely amongst the modalities.

Videos and pictures are innately visual in nature, and differ from news articles and blogs which are textual in nature. Even within the textual sources, there exist differences: news articles are more factual in nature, while blogs are opinionated. In multimedia applications, such information is often available in a variety of unstructured formats: blogs may contain one or more pictures, or none, embedded videos, audio tracks, and/or tweets, or not, etc.

Ideally, an algorithm to make inferences from the data (e.g., whether or not the judges were fair in deciding the winner) would be given access to all available information sources, since each source may bring some unique information to the table. Machine learning with such unstructured, heterogeneous data is challenging and an active topic of research. Existing approaches assume a rigidly structured input format. They cannot accommodate missing modalities (incomplete information) or modalities with multiple instances (over-complete information).  In this project, we intend to design and develop principled approaches to learning from heterogeneous, unstructured multimedia data.

One of the problems that we are interested in is artist recommendation. Current approaches rely on either collaborative filtering methods (relying on the wisdom of the crowd to determine if two artists are similar), or content based methods (two artists are considered similar if the audio content of their songs are similar) to determine if two artists are similar.  We are interested in developing a multimodal artist similarity, based on heterogeneous unstructured social and multimedia data that relates to artists.  This can include band videos and pictures (which implicitly provide information about the “look-and-feel” of an artist), tweets, reviews, and blogs about the artists’ music (providing opinions and information about artists), lyrics, their social network of listeners, etc. We believe that combining all this information through a more accurate multimodal similarity measure will improve recommendation compared to using content or collaborative filtering only.

Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society to Honor Professor Marc A. Meyers with Symposium

The Minerals Metals and Materials Society (TMS) will honor Marc A. Meyers, a materials science professor at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering at their annual meeting in February 2014 through a special symposium on Dynamic Behavior of Materials. (Meyers is affiliated with Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, and NanoEngineering at the Jacobs School.)

Symposium organizers: Naresh Thadhani, Georgia Institute of Technology and George Thompson Gray, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Sponsorship: TMS/ASM: Mechanical Behavior of Materials Committee

Abstract submission is open until July 1. A description of the symposium from the website of TMS2014 is below.

The dynamic behavior of materials encompasses a broad range of phenomena associated with extreme environment and with relevance to technological applications in military and civilian sectors. The field of dynamic behavior of materials comprises diverse phenomena such as deformation, fracture, fragmentation, shear localization, damage dissipation, chemical reactions under extreme conditions, and processing (combustion synthesis; shock compaction; explosive welding and fabrication; shock and shear synthesis of novel materials). It has evolved considerably in the past twenty years and is now at a stage where its significance to all classes of materials including metals, ceramics, polymers, and composites is becoming relevant.

It is recognized today, as evidenced by the contributions herein, that materials aspects are of utmost importance in extreme dynamic loading events. The macro mechanical and physical processes that govern the phenomena manifest themselves at the microstructural level, by dazzling complexity of defect configurations and effects. Nevertheless, these processes/mechanisms can be quantitatively treated on the basis of accumulated knowledge. We are entering an exciting stage where our capabilities, from continuum and molecular dynamics computations, enable realistic predictions of materials performances and are starting to guide not only the design process but also our further micromechanical understanding of deformation processes at every level, including the basic dislocation mechanisms. The multiple technologies applications of this field include crashworthiness, machining, and important military effects of armor and projectile designs, ballistic penetrations, and explosive dynamics leading in general to the design of conventional and nuclear weapons. Applications in the medical field are also becoming important, with recent developments aimed at understanding traumatic brain injury and drug delivery. The dynamic behavior of materials during processing, including during compaction, synthesis, welding, forming, etc., is also of considerable importance. The symposium organizers hope that, through the publications of the symposium articles, the materials community will become more exposed to this research field.

Electrical Engineering Grad Student Christian Venerus Finalist in Broadcom Foundation University Research Competition

Electrical Engineering Grad Student Christian Venerus Finalist in Broadcom Foundation University Research Competition

Christian Venerus, an electrical engineering graduate student from electrical and computer engineering professor Ian Galton’s Integrated Signal Processing Group was one of 12 finalists at the Broadcom Foundation University Research Competition earlier this month. (Read the Broadcom press release.)

Christian Venerus’ project “A 3-4GHz Mostly-Digital GSM-Compliant 1.0/1.2V PLL in 65 nm CMOS” studied how making the implementation of frequency synthesizers in chipsets more digital results in effective collaboration and communication, accurate location, and faster response for law enforcement agencies, remote monitoring and diagnosis of health conditions.

Other research from Venerus: A recent paper by Venerus and Galton “Delta-Sigma FDC Based Fractional- PLLs,” published by IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers is posted on the Integrated Signal Processing Group publications page.

Broadcom Foundation’s mission is to advance education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by funding research, recognizing scholarship and increasing opportunity.

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is part of the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. 

Electrical Engineering Grad Student Christian Venerus Finalist in Broadcom Foundation University Research Competition

Associate Dean Charles Tu Awarded Honorary Doctorate

Electrical Engineering Professor Charles W. Tu has been awarded an honorary doctorate of engineering at Linköping University. At the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, Tu serves as Associate Dean and as a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Over the past two decades, Tu has worked closely with researchers at Linköping University, Sweden (LiU). The research has focused on developing new electronic/photonic/spintronic materials. The work has resulted in over 150 joint publications and conference contributions with LiU’s professors Weimin Chen and Irina Buyanova. 

Congratulations to professor Charles Tu for this well deserved recognition his contributions to materials physics research at LiU.

This collaboration first got started when Professor Chen was working in the University of California at Berkeley. Since Chen’s return to LiU in 1993, the cooperation has flourished and has covered a very wide range of materials research spanning from low-temperature MBE grown GaAs and InP for high-frequency devices, dilute nitrides for multi-junction solar cells and near-infrared lasers for fiber-optic communications, to ZnO nanorods for UV light emitters and sensors, self-assembled InAs/GaAs quantum dots for spintronics and quantum information, and GaP/GaNP core/shell nanowires for photonic applications. Read the press release from Linköping University.

Tu is well known for advancing the field of molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), a method of depositing artificial crystals atomic layer by atomic layer that is used to build novel semiconductor hetero- and nano-structures for electronic, opto-electronic, and photovoltaic devices. He was ranked among the Most Cited Physicist by the Institute of Scientific Information (1997). Tu is a Fellow of the IEEE, the American Physical Society, and the AVS Science and Technology Society. He was Engineering Educator of the Year in San Diego County in 2006, the recipient of Taiwan's Pan Wen-Yuan Foundation Outstanding Research Award in 2009, and the recipient of the North American MBE Innovator Award in2011.

Charles Tu joined the UC San Diego faculty in 1988, and was appointed associate dean of the Jacobs School in 2004, after serving from 1999 to 2003 as chair of the ECE department. He was a distinguished member of AT&T Bell Laboratories technical staff from 1980 to 1988. He earned his Ph.D. in Engineering and Applied Science from Yale University in 1978.

UC San Diego Entrepreneur Challenge / Elevator Pitch Winners / Jacobs School Students and Alumni

Several of winning pitches from the UC San Diego Entrepreneur Challenge “Elevator Pitch” competition have connections to the Jacobs School of Engineering. 

Check out videos of Jacobs School affiliated winners below. All the elevator pitch videos, as well as event photos, are available here. (A big high five to the  UC San Diego Entrepreneur Challenge organizers for recording and posting the elevator pitches!)

Wolf Biosciences founded by Bioengineering PhD candidate Adam Young won the audience award in the “BioTech & MedTech” category. Watch Young’s two minute pitch on YouTube below: 

Uzair Mohammad, a Jacobs School freshman, won the judges award from the Technology/Innovation track. Watch YouTube video below:

Judges: John Yamauchi (Jacobs School bioengineering BS alumnus) and his ChemoTactics won the judges award in the “BioTech & MedTech” category. Watch the video on YouTube below: 

 

 Be sure to check out the next event of the UC San Diego Entrepreneur Challenge: The 2013 Startup Job Fair on Weds March 6 from 3 to 7 PM in the Price Center on the UC San Diego campus.

MAE Undergrad Young Jin Kim Wins Library Research Award

Jacobs School undergrad Young Jin Kim won second prize in the Life Sciences / Physical Sciences category of the 2012 Undergraduate Library Research Prize here at UC San Diego. (Read the full story on the UC San Diego Library website.)

Young Jin Kim, who is affiliated with Sixth College, who was nominated for the Undergraduate Library Research Prize by Joanna McKittrick, a professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Young Jin's research project focused on designing and building a spray pyrolysis stem to produce luminescent powders for application in solid state lighting. McKittrick first hired Kim to work in her lab after he approached her with a proposal titled "I Want to Work in Your Lab," in which he explained his fascination with materials science. That initiative clearly made him stand out, as did his research subsequently.

"When Young Jin started this research, he knew nothing about solid state lighting or luminescent materials and I was impressed with his independent research into these topics," said McKittrick. "To develop this new method to synthesize particles, he needed to conduct some background research. He independently, and without my prodding, learned to use the vast library resources available to us on the campus. He has looked up papers on his research, read textbooks to understand the principles of spectroscopy and x-ray diffraction, and learned to use the JCPDS files in the library. I am truly astonished that he keyed onto the importance of using the library in this area of research; he has definitely surpassed some more senior graduate students in his research approach."

In selecting Young Jin for 2nd Prize, the jury was most influenced by the fact that he employed research methods not used before in McKittrick's lab, and as a result, he was able to set up experiments based on detailed descriptions he found in journal articles; previously, experiments were based on methods already in use in the lab. This demonstrates how critical the information resources he delved into were to his actual research, at every step of the process.