Check out these pictures of the UC San Diego ChemE student board

We love these pictures of the executive board of UC San Diego chapter of the the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, with teaching professor Justin Opatkiewicz. Board members are: president Sarah Abdulabbas, VPs Michael Liang, Teiko Yakobson and Erica Fung, Chairs Rachel Patron, Amy Chung, Iza Samek, Avital Slavin and Mio White, social media publicist Sarah Diaz, campus publicist Bao Vo Ngo, TESC representative Nida Moeen, fundraiser Alex Benitez and webmaster Christine Lao.

Engineering as a Force for Public Good / Dean Albert P. Pisano / Public Lecture

Dean Albert P. Pisano recently offered a technology "tour" of the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering via The Making of the Modern World lecture series, put on by Roosevelt College at UC San Diego. You can watch the lecture on YouTube (embedded below). Pisano provides an overview of some ways that Jacobs School engineering research is serving as a force for the public good.

About Dean Pisano 
On Sept. 1, 2013, Pisano joined the Jacobs School of as Professor and Dean. He holds the Walter J. Zable Chair in Engineering. 

Pisano is a highly accomplished mechanical engineer who, in 2001, was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to the design, fabrication, commercialization, and educational aspects of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS).

The Art of Nanolasers

Electrical engineering grad student Janelle Shane has a knack for photography and communicating about science. Also, nanolasers. Blogging at Postcards from the Frontiers of Science, Shane features breathtaking images from her research in photonics, which in her own words means: "I study light, and the engineering problems you can solve using light."

Photo courtesy of electrical engineering grad student Qing Gu.

Shane is part of the Ultrafast and Nanoscale Optics Group led by electrical engineering professor Shaya Fainman. You might say she has a gift for explaining science on the nanoscale. To demonstrate how a nanolaser is built, for example, Shane positioned a nanolaser built at UC San Diego next to a hoodoo, which is a skinny tower of rock that protrudes from the  ground.

Shane explains how they are similar:

The one on the left is a nanolaser, carved by high-energy plasma and strong acid, and invisible to the naked eye.  The one on the right is a hoodoo, carved by wind and rain, and is approximately 20 million times larger. And about 60 million times older.

The reason they look similar is that they’re actually carved by similar phenomena - different layers of these pillars are made of materials that are eaten away at different rates.  In both these cases, the top layer’s made out of the hardest material, and is supported by a pedestal of ever-decreasing thickness.  The hoodoo’s pillar will eventually be eaten away, making the pillar topple.  We face the same danger when making our nanolasers, where we have to time the etch length carefully to prevent the laser from collapsing.

 Check out Shane's other fun, fascinating and just plain cool pics on her blog.

Image from simulations of light in the cavities of nanolasers by Janelle Shane.

A microscopic nanolaser imaged under an electron microscope by Shane's labmate and fellow grad student Qing Gu.

Rocket and Balloon Launched by Triton Rocket Club

Undergraduate involved with the Triton Rocket Club at UC San Diego celebrated two successes recently. The students launched both a rocket and a near-space balloon over the May 11-12 weekend.

The UC San Diego undergraduates launched their rocket, “Starfish Prime,” at the Lucerne Dry Lake rocket launch site in the Mojave Desert. Starfish Prime reached 820 mph (over mach 1) and 4,769 ft (almost a mile). The students recovered the rocket intact. You can watch the launch in the video embedded below. 

Triton Rocket Club at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering 

Starfish Prime shoots up over the Mojave Desert

Students with the Triton Rocket Club also launched its first balloon system recently. It reached 105,696 feet in altitude. The near-space photos and videos from the balloon’s trip, see below, and definitely worth checking out. 

According to Triton Rocket Club president Nico Montoya, the milestones described above are solid steps forward towards their current goal of being the first undergraduate team to go to space (62 miles), which they plan on doing via a rocket launched on high-altitude balloon. Their next step is building a rocket to compete in the University Student Rocketry Challenge (USRC) over the summer that will fly over two miles high, which they have received NASA funding for through the California Space Grant Consortium.

Triton Rocket Club

The Triton Rocket Club (TRC) is a pre-professional club founded at the University of California, San Diego in the fall quarter of the 2011 school year. TRC was founded with the vision that it would aid students interested in rocketry to gain practical and technical experience as well as help them attain the necessary skills and connections to get internships. Currently, the Triton Rocket Club continues to give students an opportunity to apply the knowledge they have learned in the classroom to real world projects.

Triton Rocket Club Executive Officers

President: Nico Montoya

Vice President: Nathan Woodward

Secretary: Monique McClain

Treasurer: Krishna Gadani

Public Relations: Daniel Kaminski

Corporate Relations: Alex Akopian

Sponsors
Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems
SPAWAR (Space an Naval Warfare Systems Command)
NASA/California Space Grant Consortium
UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering
UC San Diego Corporate Affiliates Program (CAP)
Aerocon Systems
ATA Engineering

Related blog posts
Rocket club helps Escondido students gear up for college (Jan 14, 2014)

Rocket Club Blasts Off (Dec 3, 2013)

Help engineering teams raise funds for student scholarships!

Update: As of May 27 at 2:30 p.m.: Overclocked CSE Enthusiasts was in second place with $3510 raised, followed by Team Cymer with $2760 and ViaSat with $2440. Team Village was in first place with $4820.

There is a battle brewing between three engineering-related teams registering for this year's Triton 5K June 7. Team Cymer is currently in third place in terms of money raised for the event, with $1770, followed closely by ViaSat, with $1650 and by Overclocked CSE Enthusiasts, led by computer science chair Rajesh Gupta, with $1340. Feel free to throw your support behind either one. The funds go to student scholarships.

The competition prompted the following exchange on Facebook on the UCSD CSE Students and Alumni group between CSE alumni board president Lindsey Fowler and fellow board member Nikolai Devereaux, who is a program manager at ViaSat. Devereaux wondered if the rivalry between Overclocked CSE Enthusiasts and the ViaSat team is "the nerd version of Team Edward vs Team Jacob."

Lindsey Fowler via UCSD CSE Department

16 hrs

There's still time to join us at the Triton 5k! "Overclocked CSE Enthusiasts" are currently #4 in fundraising! Still 3 more days to register!

Triton 5K

5K.UCSD.EDU

Unlike ·  · Share

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  Nikolai Devereaux I'm pushing for Team ViaSat. It's this the nerd version of Team Edward vs Team Jacob?

  16 hours ago · Unlike · 1
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  Nikolai Devereaux Either way, Team Cymer is going DOWN

  16 hours ago · Like
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  Lindsey Fowler Yes that's exactly what this is! Nerd takeover of the 5k!

  15 hours ago · Like · 1

Outstanding grads: Victor Lee

Under Victor Lee’s leadership, the UC San Diego chapter of IEEE grew from about 400 members to 630, becoming the second-largest in the nation. Lee said he’s just giving back. “I’m pretty sure I owe my success to IEEE,” he said. He is graduating with a bachelor’s in electrical engineering this year, but he’s not quite done with UC San Diego. Next year, he will be a master’s student here. “This is what I like,” he said. “This is what I’m good at.” In his spare time, Lee is transforming his parents’ home into a smart house. His latest project is an automatic watering system for his mother’s plants.

Outstanding graduates: Zach Johnson

When he graduates this summer, Zach Johnson will join four other Jacobs School computer science alums on the Glass team in Google[x], Google’s moonshot group. Johnson is better known to his classmates and the teachers here as zachoverflow, his Twitter handle and Internet pseudonym. Johnson interned at Microsoft and Facebook before landing an internship on the Glass team last summer. “I had a few assigned projects but I got them done early and decided to squash other peoples’ bugs—it's a good way to make friends,” he said. When he’s not programming or thinking about philosophy, Johnson enjoys playing the hammered dulcimer, a string instrument generally found in folk music pieces.