Students get hands-on with Summer EnVision Experience

Blake Iwaisako and Zoe Tcheng work
in the EnVision Arts and Engineering
Maker Studio

 A team of five UC San Diego undergraduate students spent the summer developing a device to help TaylorMade Golf study how minute differences in the golf balls they produce affect the balls’ performance. The 10-week Summer EnVision Experience (SEE) internship brings students from across campus and from various engineering disciplines together to collaborate on a project sponsored by a partner company or organization.

SEE was designed by the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering to provide sophomore and junior students with hands-on experience creating, pitching and developing a project from start to finish. During the internship, students gain hands-on experience with the wide array of tools available in the EnVision Arts and Engineering Maker Studio. For Zoe Tcheng, a bioengineering student, SEE gave her the opportunity to develop her computer modeling skills, and ultimately confirmed her choice of major.

Ariel Navarro builds
a prototype of the
manufacturing pipeline

“I definitely got better at soldering, I soldered most of this printed circuit board here,” Tcheng said. “It was rough at the beginning but I got a lot better. And I learned some modeling, which is what I was really interested in. I learned a lot of arduino coding, which I had done in class before, but not as fleshed out as this project and not with as many components.

“What I figured out from this is that I definitely don’t want to do mechanical engineering,” said Tcheng, laughing. “The track I’m in as a bioengineer is biosystems, so we’re more kind of more electrical engineering focused. This experience reinforced that I prefer that, and enjoy the soldering and programming.”

Yichen Xiang works on electrical
components of the team's device

For electrical engineering student Ariel Navarro, SEE not only helped him develop more skills using the tools and machinery at EnVision, but helped him see the reality of their limits, as well.

“At first it was a lot of knowledge to dig into, because there are so many different things to learn; we’re 3D printing, using CAD for parts, laser cutting. It was a little overwhelming,” said Navarro. “But thankfully we were taking it one step at a time. One of the things you don’t understand until you experience it, is that a lot of machines aren’t as precise as you think. And even though it’s just a little bit off, it can throw the whole piece off. Right now for example, we have to redo a component because the hole a pipe will fit in is just a little bit too big, and the pipe is wobbling inside. So even though we measured it, it’s not always exactly precise.”

The students also said they came away with a greater understanding of what it means to collaborate as a cross-disciplinary team.

Caitlin Kim uses the laser cutter
at EnVision

“I learned a lot, especially with teamwork,” said Tcheng. “Because we were here together four days a week, for 10 weeks.”

Navarro agreed, noting that no matter how technically skilled you are, communication is still key.

“Working on a project like this, I learned to communicate,” he said. “You’ve got to make sure you’re letting people know what you’re doing and your timing. You have to maintain constant communication when you’re working with other people.”

In previous years, SEE interns have worked with the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography to develop the aquarium’s first virtual reality exhibit; a sound-matching game to share complicated whale call research with the public; and an exhibit focused on the albedo effect and an interactive RFID system. The internship was cancelled in 2020 due to COVID-19.

STARS summer research program goes virtual

The ongoing pandemic didn’t stop students from gaining valuable hands-on research experience this summer through the SummerTraining Academy for Research Success (STARS) program at UC San Diego. Melissa Lepe, an aerospace engineering student at UC Irvine, got creative with her STARS mentor—UC San Diego structural engineering professor Ingrid Tomac— to find ways to gain data analysis skills while advancing our knowledge of mudslides.

“When there are forest fires, mudflows often occur after the fire,” said Lepe. “And in Tomac’s Geo-Micromechanics Research Group, we wanted to study the exact patterns of behavior during those mudflows, so we studied the soil particles and how they attach to air particles, to try and really see what we can learn about their movement, and what we can predict to establish better building infrastructure and warning signals for mudslides.”

 Since the research experience was virtual, Lepe and her graduate student mentor, UC San Diego structural engineering PhD student Wenpei Ma, tag teamed the research process. Ma would conduct experiments using very high resolution cameras in Tomac’s lab, and send some of the resulting images and footage to Lepe to analyze. 

“My graduate mentor is working on different types of samples, testing different types of sand to see how fine, coarse and medium sand behave during a mudslide. He takes high resolution footage of these particles moving around during tests so we can see how they bind with each other and make aglomerate, a combination of sand and air particles. He uploads the videos remotely to a drive, and I analyze them from here.”

 From this high resolution footage, Lepe is able to track these very small particles as they move during the experiment, following a single particle across a span of time to see how it behaves, which particles it is drawn to, or if particles in the aglomerate separate when they come in contact with another particle. Tomac’s team will use this information to try and answer questions about how the size of sand particles impacts the speed of mudslides; how gravity impacts different sizes and shapes of particles; and ultimately what we can do to mitigate the impacts of mudslides. 

In addition to this research, the STARS program provides students with GRE and grad school prep; a series of speakers on topics ranging from imposter syndrome to different paths to grad school and the breadth of careers possible with a graduate degree; leadership activities; and a community of students to support one another.

 “I’m a first generation college student so I didn't even know what to expect when it came to applying to graduate school,” said Lepe. “I thought the GRE was just another SAT, and in some ways it is, but there are other components. So having the GRE class definitely helped me see what to expect, but also learn ways that I could effectively study and approach the exam.” 

Lepe said the community building aspects of the STARS program, even virtually, were also particularly helpful.

 “It’s more than just a one summer research program--it’s about finding a community with other like minded individuals and finding ways to build up one another and potentially become more than just people you met during the program, but a resource in the future or someone you could reach out and talk to. It’s definitely about making connections that are more impactful than one summer.”

 Lepe, who has conducted research on renewable energy and power plants at UC Irvine, plans to earn a PhD with a focus on energy systems and propulsion in aerospace, working toward energy alternatives to create more sustainable airplanes. 

 Learn more about the STARS program: https://grad.ucsd.edu/diversity/programs/stars/index.html 

Cameron Yenche: a summer of automation

Alpacas, cancer diagnostics, and autonomous trash-collecting robots, oh my! It’s been a busy summer for mechanical engineering student Cameron Yenche, who interned at medical-grade genetic testing company Invitae in Boulder, Colorado, while also interning remotely for San Diego-based Clear Blue Sea, building a robot to autonomously collect trash in the ocean. 

Yenche, who has a concentration in renewable energy and environmental flows, and a minor in entrepreneurship and innovation, said these two experiences helped solidify why engineering is the right field for him.

“I was able to see that the solutions of engineering can have an impact on so many people,” he said. “I see engineering as the way to have the most impact with my work.”

At Invitae, which provides a variety of genetic testing for medical decision making, including testing of tumors to better treat specific types of cancers, testing for genetic illnesses and prenatal screenings, Yenche worked to develop an autonomous pipetting system to streamline the company’s manufacturing process. He also worked on projects utilizing computer vision to increase production quality control, as well as many other projects that support or enhance diagnostic production capacity. 

“It’s all over the place because the manufacturing process is quite interesting," he said. "Essentially you’re going from proteins and enzymes to capsules, and the process of getting there requires lots of physical processes that involve liquid nitrogen and freeze drying, while being maintained in a certain environment with regards to humidity...it’s complex.”

Outside of automating this manufacturing process, he also spent time working to design a 50-foot version of Clear Blue Sea’s autonomous Floating Robot to Eliminate Debris (FRED). Yenche started with the non-profit in November 2020, and was able to continue his role remotely over the summer. 

“This summer we’ve been focused on scaling up the models of the smaller vessels they already have. I initially came on as a mechanical design engineer-type role–essentially developing the conceptual design of a 50-foot version of the FRED–and it has led into a more project management oriented position, where I am leading the team and also working beside everyone as an engineer.”

The ultimate goal is to have a large mother ship with a fleet of 50-foot FREDs out in the ocean collecting trash autonomously, and bringing it back to the vessel to be processed for recycling there, or stored for processing later.

His biggest surprise of the summer didn’t have anything to do with work, though. 

“Probably the most interesting part about this internship is that I’m living in an AirBnb that’s an alpaca farm,” he said. “It’s kind of crazy. There’s alpacas, and then a bunch of chickens, a pair of ducks. It's really cool. Every morning there’s a rooster that crows, and the alpacas come up and sniff your nose.”

On campus, Yenche was part of the Social Entrepreneurship Association, which introduced him to several of the internships he’s had over the course of his undergraduate years. 

Team Internship Program helps alumnus land industry job

Every summer since 2003, small teams of two to five UC San Diego engineering students have been sent out to local companies, tasked with applying their skills and collaborating with each other and company engineers to complete a real-world project. For Robert Moroto, who earned his bachelor’s, master’s and PhD in mechanical engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering, his Team Internship Program (TIP) experience was so positive that he not only participated for three summers with the same company, but wound up working for the sponsor company, Solar Turbines, once he completed his PhD. 

Jacobs School alumnus
 Robert Moroto

Moroto is now a development engineer in systems and analytics at Solar Turbines, the San Diego-based designer and manufacturer of industrial gas turbines for electrical power generation, marine propulsion, natural gas production and a variety of other uses. He said his TIP experiences were crucial in preparing him for this role. 

“There are probably too many ways TIP was beneficial to list them all,” Moroto said. “If a student’s goal is to do engineering full-time, then, in my opinion, TIP is as close as you can come to getting that experience in a realistic setting with the additional benefits of working in a very close-knit team while in the context of a well-structured program.”

Moroto didn’t know many engineers growing up, so participating in the Team Internship Program helped him get a sense of what a day-in-the-life could be like for an engineer, gaining a better understanding of the workflow, expectations, constraints, and opportunities of engineering in a commercial setting. 

Over the course of the three summers that he participated as a TIP intern with Solar Turbines, Moroto and his teammates were able to develop a virtual sensor to estimate fuel density from data measured by existing non-density sensors on gas turbine engines; investigated an algorithm for estimating the energy content of fuel entering a gas turbine engine; and studied several different methods for reducing the start-up time of Solar Turbines’ gas turbine engines. 

“The biggest reason I decided to pursue a TIP opportunity was because each project is focused on a small team operating in a non-academic setting,” said Moroto. “The advantages of this style of internship really cannot be overstated. The commercial/non-academic setting of TIP is important because projects need to satisfy realistic types of complexity that will not be encountered in school, such as making sure their work can be applied to an entire existing product line, where each product has its own specifications, for example.”

Moroto recommends that any student even slightly curious about TIP keep an eye on the projects listed each year, and take the leap to apply for any that are of interest.  

“If you don’t succeed, the interview process alone is a great experience. If you land a project, then you will probably be given a rare opportunity that may potentially kick start your career.”

Students interested in participating in the Team Internship Program next summer can find more information here. TIP recruitment runs from October through April, so it’s not too early to start thinking about applying!

For companies looking to sponsor a team of two to five engineering students for a summer project, get more information and complete the project description form here. 

Jacobs School engineers recognized as photonics Rising Stars

Two Jacobs School of Engineering affiliates were among the 13 researchers recognized by Laser Focus World’s inaugural Rising Stars Award program. Bioengineering Professor Lingyan Shi, and electrical engineering alumna Sonika Obheroi, were recognized by the magazine for their contributions to the photonics industry. 

Shi, an assistant professor of bioengineering, uses ultrafast optical imaging, including stimulated Raman scattering and multiphoton fluorescence, to look inside cells to answer biological and medical questions, and even diagnose disease. Read her Rising Star showcase here, and learn more about her research in this profile. 

Obheroi, who earned her master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from UC San Diego, is now a product manager for near-eye display test products at Gamma Scientific. These devices emulate the human eye for accurate characterization of AR/VR/MR and heads-up displays. Read her Rising Star showcase here. 

High throughput screening of biosensors directly in mammalian cells enables live cell imaging and drug screening

by Longwei Liu

Fluorescent biosensors based on fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), a microscope imaging technology that uses fluorescent color changes to measure active molecular actions, have revolutionized biomedical science by enabling the direct measurement of signaling activities in living cells.

However, scientists face a big challenge when developing FRET biosensors—they are largely developed by trial and error, making it cumbersome for scientists to identify high-performance FRET biosensors. Now, bioengineers at the University of California San Diego developed a technology that can identify such biosensors with ease.

The technology, called FRET-Seq platform, is the first to accomplish this feat. It couples FRET signals to next-generation sequencing techniques that are capable of screening large-scale libraries directly in mammalian cells. The FRET readings from single cells expressing the biosensors are then used to screen and sort cells into different groups. The sorted cells then get analyzed by next-generation sequencing, which helps scientists to identify the biosensor sequences.

The UC San Diego team, led by postdoctoral researcher Longwei Liu and former Ph.D. student Praopim Limsakul from the lab of bioengineering professor Peter Yingxiao Wang, detailed their work in a paper published Aug 19 in Nature Communications.

FRET-Seq also uses a new self-activating FRET (saFRET) design, in which a kinase domain is linked to the conventional biosensor and causes the activation. This design can overcome difficulties in mammalian-cell library screening caused by the heterogenic kinase activities from individual cells. Counter-sorting strategy associated with this design further improves both sensitivity and specificity of biosensors during the screening process.

The biosensors developed through this platform have better sensitivity when applied in live-cell imaging, which allows applications evaluating immune T cell functions and screening drugs. In fact, ZAP70 is a critical kinase involved in many diseases, including autoimmunity, organ transplant rejection, graft-versus-host disease, or B cell CLL. Using the ZAP70 biosensor designed in this work, Liu and colleagues have screened a kinase inhibitor library and identified several inhibitors, including FDA-approved cancer drugs, that can be repurposed to inhibit ZAP70 activity and hence, related autoimmune diseases.

Looking into the future, the team is extending this FRET-seq technology as a general platform for the development of other high-performance and ultrasensitive biosensors for single cell imaging. The team is also integrating the high content screening platforms equipped with fully automated cellular imaging apparatus and analysis algorithms to screen large-scale compound libraries for drug discovery.

Other contributors of this work include: Yan Huang, Reed E. S. Harrison, Tse-Shun Huang, Yiwen Shi, Yiyan Yu, Krit Charupanit, Sheng Zhong, Shaoying Lu, Jin Zhang, and Shu Chien as well as the team of Xianhui Meng and Jie Sun from Zhejiang University.

Faculty assistant in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering is recognized with Exemplary Employee of the Year Award

 

Lusia Veksler, a faculty assistant in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, has received an Exemplary Employee of the Year award. Veksler is being recognized for her service to the department’s faculty, graduate students and operations. 

Veksler founded and leads a Communication in English program for graduate students in mechanical and aerospace engineering, who are using English as a second language. Her aim has been to encourage greater engagement by students new to the community, who find communicating with other students to be a challenge. Faculty said they found her efforts to be beneficial as these graduate students become more outgoing, assertive, and positive. 

Veksler also provided graduate student assistance and advice for a faculty member’s large research group of about a dozen graduate students when that faculty member ended up unexpectedly in the emergency room. This helped to avoid significant struggles for the entire group.

She supported a PhD student in an mental health crisis emergency by personally speaking with her on the phone no fewer than 10 times and no fewer than five times in person in a two-week period. She also escorted the student to Counseling and Psychological Services (UCSD CAPS) to seek counseling and avoid self-harm. The student has since recovered and returned to graduate studies.

On the operations side, Veksler led an initiative to obtain software for pre-submission plagiarism detection in research-related publications to avoid adverse impact on UC San Diego and our faculty. Over a six-month period, she negotiated on behalf of a group of faculty that grew to include research groups across the Jacobs School of Engineering to obtain a per-user license for iThenticate for $10/year, significantly reduced from an incredibly expensive $100/use fee that some faculty were paying. The software streamlines assessment of plagiarism to a few second effort via an online interface.

Veksler also recorded several brief video training programs for faculty and students to cope with the changeover to SAP Concur travel and expense service, tailoring them to the attention and time-crunched people in these groups. 

She has no doubt saved the university substantial costs and helped the faculty and students under her care adhere to university practices, procedures and policies, researchers said.

Veksler also participates in the department’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusiveness (EDI) Committee as a staff member of her own accord. She is a vocal member of this committee and an invaluable advocate for traditionally underrepresented groups in the department, faculty said.