The UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering is meeting employer needs in STEM

At the U.S. News STEM Solutions 2017 conference, UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering Dean Albert P. Pisano participated in the closing keynote session. Pisano shared the stage with Rep. Scott Peters; Debra Reed, Chairman, President and CEO of Sempra Energy; Francis deSouza, President and CEO of Illumina; and Mark Dankberg, Chairman of the Board and CEO of ViaSat.

The high-powered group discussed the importance of meeting the STEM challenges in San Diego and beyond, as well as the key roles that community colleges play in filling the STEM pipeline.

“I spend a lot of time listening to corporate executives to learn from them exactly what their workforce needs are, so that we at the Jacobs School can be preparing students to the best of our ability,” said Pisano.

Increasing and supporting STEM-related degree programs at institutions of higher education is crucial, but it’s the not whole picture, Pisano noted. If students don't know what types of STEM jobs are available to them, how will they know to choose a STEM field of study?

Pisano highlighted the need to introduce to students at a young age the various types of STEM careers that are available to them.

The Jacobs School of Engineering helps in this important task through a variety of outreach programs, some of which are run by the Jacobs School’s IDEA Engineering Student Center. In addition, the Jacobs School administers UC San Diego’s instantiation of the California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science, or COSMOS.

COSMOS is a four-week residential program for high school students with demonstrated achievements in math and science that gives this kind of introduction to a career in engineering. COSMOS is offered at four University of California campuses and aims to encourage high school students interested in science, technology, engineering and math to continue pursuing these fields in college.

At UC San Diego, COSMOS has been in place for 12 years. Students who are admitted to the program select from nine clusters depending on their interests, which range from computers in everyday life and the amazing red blood cell, to tissue engineering and robot inventors.

Read about COSMOS 2016 here.

Learn how to apply to COSMOS here.

Storify: Missed it? Check out our tweets from graduation 2017!

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

New solar energy "chill" spot on campus

This Friday, January 13^th, UC San Diego’s Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW) will be showcasing their solar projects at the site of Solar Chill, a recently finished project that is open for all the community to utilize.

The site is located between the Village and ERC housing areas, directly across the street from the Rady School of Management.  The event will take place from 12-2pm and feature the students responsible for Solar Chill and more, including SolarRoller and Solar Car.

Solar Chill is an off-grid photovoltaic structure that recently finished construction and is now open for use. The system can produce 1.5kW of electricity. This generated energy flows into a battery system that feeds the lighting for the site as well as outlets built into the on-site benches. Solar Chill was created to bring solar down from rooftops tucked away out of sight and give people a chance to directly interact with solar and see its functionality. Now that the site is up and running, it is the team’s goal to spread awareness of it so that the community knows to use it. This was the first student-designed project approved to be built on the UC San Diego campus and the team hopes it will serve as an inspiration to other student teams to implement their own creations.

The Solar Chill site is open to anyone - feel free to stop by and recharge!

UC San Diego Student Motorizes Bike

Do you ever find yourself hitting the snooze button over and over, and then wishing you could fly or had roller skates for feet so you could make it to class on time? James Yao, a first year Visual Arts major, solved this problem by building an electric bike.

Yao came to UC San Diego to build his bike.

“I’ve been wanting to do this for awhile, ever since I first saw electric bikes in my junior year of high school,” said Yao. “I designed the bike over the summer but I didn’t have the time or money to hire someone to machine the parts. My top two choices for schools were the University of Washington or UC San Diego, but my design wasn’t good for the rainy weather.”

When Yao arrived at UC San Diego, he asked his orientation leader about resources for makers on campus and heard about EnVision. When he saw the photos of the space on the website, he knew he could finish the project.

Yao used the 3D printers to prototype brackets for mounting his electric motor and the soldering stations to build the electronics.

According to Yao, the 3D printers provided the biggest benefit. “At first, my design didn’t work – the bracket wasn’t strong enough,” said Yao. “I was able to iterate on the design by printing versions.”

Yao’s bike goes up to 25 mph, which helps him get from Warren to his 8:00 a.m. class on the other side of Peterson Hill! Jealous? Who knows, maybe he’ll help you build one!

Triton Racing unveils their 2017 car

Triton Racing's 2017 Car

Triton Racing recently held an unveiling event for their 2017 car, which they will take to competition in Lincon, Nebraska June 21 – 24, 2017.

“It’s an iteration of the 2015 car,” said Ivan Voroshilov, Vice President of Triton Racing and a third year mechanical engineering major. “We have all year to test it.”

At the same time, the team is developing 2018 car.

“Our team is the best it’s ever been,” said Voroshilov.

Formula SAE started with six teams in 1981 and has grown to over 160.

The day of the unveiling event, Steve Fox, President of PowerTrain Technology (Chief judge of Formula SAE) and Tony Lyscio, Senior Structural Engineer at SpaceX were on site to meet with SAE chapters from multiple southern California universities and providing a lecture. They toured facilities, enjoyed a meet and greet, and saw test runs of racing team vehicles.

“We invited 10 other university teams from Southern California,” said Alex Tran, Sponsorship Director for Trion Racing and a fourth year bioengineering major. “This is a regional event every year, and this is the first time it’s been held at UC San Diego.”

“Formula SAE refines engineers,” said Fox during the lecture portion of the event. “I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to support this type of a program. Every engineer that graduates with Formula SAE experience under their belts gets cherry-picked into the best jobs.”

“At SpaceX, we recruit heavily from Formula SAE,” said Lyscio. “These are the types of mentalities that we want.”

It’s not just SpaceX – Hunter Industries, Triton Racing’s title sponsor, brought on Triton Racing members, including Daniel Morris and Ian Holmes, as interns over the summer, and recently hired Chris Campagnoni (BS, Mechanical Engineering, ’16) as an associate mechanical engineer.

“UC San Diego provides us with the highest quality of engineering talent in the region,” said Scotty Lombardi, Manager of Talent Management at Hunter Industries. “But the talent that comes out of Triton Racing comes with an extra skillset. It sets them apart from the competition.”

See more photos here

#ILookLikeAnEngineer: Selina Valladolid

We are continuing with our #ILookLikeAnEngineer campaign with a student who continually fights stereotypes in engineering and is extremely passionate about progressing towards an equal field.

Meet Selina Valladolid, the president of the Society of Women Engineers.

Name: Selina Valladolid

Major: Physics (recently switched out of NanoEngineering)

Estimated graduation date: June 2017

Why did you choose engineering at UC San Diego?

My family is from the area. My mom went here, my dad went here. I wanted to go to Boston, but after attending Triton Day, I was like, “I could see myself here.” It hit home with me. It fit, unlike any other campus I had visited.

As for engineering and sciences, I actually took some engineering classes in high school. The engineering teacher taught my biology class, and he was always going on about the engineering projects they were doing. And I thought, “That’s rad.” I took part in the engineering club that year and then took the class. I just kind of stuck with it for all four years after that.

Why did you decide to switch from nanoengineering to physics?
So I realized over the summer that my passion truly lies in space and in the cosmos. I have always loved physics and I came to the conclusion that pursuing my undergraduate degree in physics, and perhaps focusing on engineering in graduate school, would simply be the best option for me.

What are your career goals?

I’m definitely leaning towards research right now. I’m set on going to graduate school, and my ultimate dream is to work for NASA or SpaceX. If there was ever a time I had the opportunity to go to Mars or the moon, I’d probably be down, but that isn’t my ultimate goal. What interests me is the stuff that we’re not going to reach in our lifetime, like the black holes, the supernovas, the star clusters. The really hard, deep outer space.

Do you have a favorite quote or mantra?

I actually have a wall that I put sticky notes on. The first one is probably the most common: “Well-behaved women are never remembered in history.” I always really liked this. We have to step out of the boxes in which we’re often placed.  

What are three things about you that make you an individual?

1. I tend to be very opinionated, especially when it comes to women and any minority underrepresented minority. I am a woman, and I am Hispanic. I have a seven year old sister, and I never want her to think that she can’t do something because she isn’t a male.

2. I see myself as very independent.

3. I love to travel, read, and play sports. My very first trip was in sixth grade to northern Ireland. When I turned fifteen, instead of having a quincenera, I asked my dad to take me on a trip, so I got to go to Paris.

What does this campaign mean to you?

I love it, primarily because I remember how it started. I remember seeing all this backlash against the ad - “Get somebody that looks like an engineer,” comments read. I think the campaign is a great thing, and I hope it will teach people that being an engineer has nothing to do with gender, sexuality, race or anything.

Specifically, the campaign at UC San Diego?

As much as I want as many men to come into my own organization, Society of Women Engineers, and be a part of it, as we are about supporting and encouraging women. I don’t like that men don’t want to join, but I can understand why. I feel like it could be a lot worse here. I’m glad that it could be a lot worse.