David Pogue talks about the making of NOVA's Making Stuff at Maker Faire, of course

From skiing in a 100-year blizzard to diving with sharks, David Pogue, the host of PBS's popular NOVA Making Stuff TV series, has done it all. Saturday, May 17, he gave a standing-room only audience at the Maker Faire Bay Area, an insider's look into the show's making. We were there and live-tweeted the event and you can see your tweets below. Bad news: the program has run out of funding.
Side note: we were hoping Pogue would mention Making Stuff Safer, which featured the Jacobs School's shake table, but it was not to be.

In 2001 NSF gave $3M to Nova to make a miniseries about materials science. @Pogue hosted this year.
— UCSD Engineering (@UCSDJacobs) May 17, 2014

Shark skin: nothing sticks to it: replicate in a material. @Pogue swam w sharks for that show. Attracted w fish guts.
— UCSD Engineering (@UCSDJacobs) May 17, 2014

"David you must ski faster of you'll sink." Austrian skier to Pogue in 100 y blizzard for Making Stuff Colder. @Pogue #MakerFaire
— UCSD Engineering (@UCSDJacobs) May 17, 2014

Liquid carbon dioxide thermo syphons keep permafrost frozen around Alaskan oil pipeline. @Pogue #MakerFaire
— UCSD Engineering (@UCSDJacobs) May 17, 2014

Hag fish slime as the next fabric of the future? @Pogue #MakerFaire even stronger than silk
— UCSD Engineering (@UCSDJacobs) May 17, 2014

You would not believe what's going on w robotics and bio mimicry. @Pogue #MakerFaire
— UCSD Engineering (@UCSDJacobs) May 17, 2014

Got made up to be a Neanderthal and walked the streets of SF. No one even blinked. @Pogue #MakerFaire
— UCSD Engineering (@UCSDJacobs) May 17, 2014

Got stained with mr fluid for science. Stuff that they make high tech bumpers from. @Pogue #SFmakerfaire
— UCSD Engineering (@UCSDJacobs) May 17, 2014

I tickled a penguin and it jut got turned on. Handled bees for cancer killing venom. @Pogue
— UCSD Engineering (@UCSDJacobs) May 17, 2014

NSF cutting back #novapbs funding. No more shows in pipeline. @DavidPogue #MakerFaire
— UCSD Engineering (@UCSDJacobs) May 17, 2014

Jacobs School Shake Table Featured on NOVA Nov. 6

The shake table at the Englekirk Structural Engineering Center was in the spotlight Nov. 6 on "Making Stuff Safer," a PBS/NOVA show hosted by David Pogue.
One of the show's segments documents how researchers used the facility, which is the largest outdoor shake table in the world, to test so-called wood frame soft-story buildings. The structures, dating back to the 1920s and 1930s, typically have first-floor garages and apartments on the upper floors. There are tens of thousands of these types of buildings throughout California, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the United States.
Engineers used the table to test various seismic retrofits in a 44,000-square-foot building built specifically for the occasion. John Van de Lindt, the principal investigator on the project, secured a $1.24 million grant from the National Science Foundation for the research. His team from Colorado State University is working with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Cal-Poly Pomona, Western Michigan University and Clemson University. Numerous industry partners, including Simpson Strong-Tie and the Forest Products Laboratory, as well as several other government entities are also collaborating on the tests.
More on "Making Stuff Safer" here.
More on the research here.

Alum Yoshi Kohno featured on NOVA Science Now

A--very belated--kudos for alum Yoshi Kohno, who appeared in an episode of NOVA Science NOW in October 2012. We found out about the show while talking to a NOVA crew during a test at the Englekirk Structural Engineering Center this past weekend.

Before joining the faculty at the University of Washington, Kohno was a graduate student in the research group of Mihir Ballare here at the Jacobs School. During his almost two-decade long academic career, he has hacked into cars, voting machines and even chips that expert runners insert into their shoes, among other exploits. The show retells his life since childhood when he was, of course, a computer wiz interested in cryptography.

"Thanks goodness that Yoshi is on our side," his wife, Taryn, says at one point during the show.

You can watch the show here (the segment on Kohno begins around 41:00).

You can also read about his work to hack into cars' electronic components in conjunction with Stefan Savage's research group  here at the Jacobs School in this New York Times story.

A couple of Jacobs School press releases about Kohno's work: on hacking into Diebold voting machines, which led to a testimony in front of Congress; and on a free software he helped develop to track lost or stolen laptops.

 In 2007, he landed on the MIT Technology Review's prestigious list of innovators under 35.