First Women from Osaka University Excel in Technology Commercialization program

   

The von Liebig Entrepreneurism Center and Global Connect worked with Osaka University in 2014 to design a program for students and faculty from universities in Osaka, Japan to learn about technology acceleration and transfer.  Through a combination of lectures, guest speakers, site visits and practical experience, the Osaka teams learn the basic steps involved to commercialize scientific discoveries and technology ideas.  On February 1st through February 12th, the third cohort of students participated in this two-week workshop at UC San Diego.  Since women are an underrepresented group in the fields of science and technology both in the U.S and in Japan, it was a pleasant surprise when the third cohort included three women.  

Jonathan Masters, the lead instructor, said, “My favorite part of the program is seeing the groups coalesce around a vision and understanding of their project.” Masters believes this group of students provided a better balance for the program with the addition of female students, partly because they were more prepared to begin with.  Program participants come prepared with their specialized technology innovation and they work in teams to begin the process of commercializing their new ideas.  

Although women in Japan have reached a largely equal footing with men in terms of legal rights, there remains a strong unspoken discrimination towards women in the workplace (http://www.worldbusinessculture.com/ Women-in-Business-in-Japan.html).  At the very top of corporate Japan, the “bamboo ceiling”—so-called by women for being thick, hard and not even transparent —is starting to let in some chinks of light, but they are few and far between (The Economist, Mar 29th 2014).  Against these odds, the 3 women from Osaka, Japan who participated in the CLIC-Edge Program are worthy of note. 

Sunri Lee is a graduate student and scientist at Osaka University in the field of electronic devices with organic materials.  She developed $800 eye glasses made of flexible liquid crystal lens to correct vision and develop the cerebral nerves of Amblyopic children.  Ke Zheng is an accountant, currently working on a medical tourism platform for foreign patients from China and other countries who want to travel to Japan for high quality medical treatment.  Rieko Ogura, a PhD researcher at Yokahama National University, is currently working in the field of genetic engineering of plants and plant pathology. In 2014, Ogura founded a start-up company specialized in developing a screening system to identify plant activators for sale to chemical and agrochemical companies.  Click here for more details on the projects that these three pioneering women brought to UC San Diego.

Sunri Lee is working on her Ph.D. in the Department of Chemistry at Osaka University.  She brought a prototype of the eye glasses that are designed specifically for children with Amblyopia, an eye disease that causes their vision to change frequently.  These inventive glasses are flexible, so they family does not have to buy a new pair of glasses as often as before.  The substantial savings to the family budget is one of the major benefits of the flexible liquid crystal lens.  Another benefit is that the lens helps to develop the cerebral nerves of Amblyopic children.  The team is also considering adapting the eye glasses for adults with vision problems.  

While participating in the Innovation Program at the von Liebig Center, Lee enjoyed the session on customer discovery, where she practiced conducting customer interviews.   This role playing exercise is designed to make it easier to talk to customers when the team returns to Japan.  Lee feels that the practice gave her the skills and confidence needed to conduct face-to-face market research.  This will help her team to gather the information needed to decide whether to sell the glasses for children, adults, or both.  

As a Chinese student studying in Japan, Ke Zheng believes there is a market for her online business from prior experiences with family/friends who wish to travel to Japan for medical treatments.  Zheng and her team are making a wellness and medical tourism platform to help people who cannot receive first-class healthcare in their home country, but hope to receive quality care in Japan. The goal is to improve physical well-being and quality of life. Zheng said, “Our healthcare service covers some precise and detailed examinations, physical examinations, beauty treatments, spring therapy and so on. We are providing a one-stop service through our website and a treatment package medical tour to Japan. By using our service, every consumer could get a fantastic experience to improve their health and enjoy their overseas trips at the same time without any worries.” 

About her visit to the von Liebig Center, Zheng said, “I think the whole program is perfect. It not only offered us the entrepreneurial education but also [other] connections and experiences during the two weeks. It enabled us to communicate a lot with others, which is [a] pretty valuable, exciting challenge. In the educational aspect [of the program], the courses include many different topics and related workshops. We gained a lot from these classes.”  The program made Zheng realize the importance of knowing the customers well, which decides the fate of a startup/ new business. She said, “We learned some advanced knowledge on how to do market research, how to interview potential customers, how to find the customers’ real needs, what are the challenges they face, and who our target customers are. What impresses me most is realizing when [the] customer will make a buying decision and what will influence them on that decision. We don't have enough resources to develop a perfect product with all of the functions in the early stage so setting the right priorities is becoming very important.”

Since there are many challenges in starting a new business inside and outside, Zheng plans to remain flexible enough to handle any problems, because you never know what will happen tomorrow. Therefore, it is important to keep calm and stay motivated. After the program, Zheng and her team realized that the earlier they can foresee problems, the more initiatives they can take.

Rieko Ogura, PhD, post-doc researcher at Yokahama National University, is creating plant activators in order to elicit plant immunity and foster environmentally friendly agriculture.  Her company provides a screening system that reports results to Chemical or Agrochemical Companies on whether the substances can induce plant immunity.   At UC San Diego, she learned that the most important thing is providing services from the customer’s viewpoint. Now she has started to visit potential customers to ascertain their needs and help them adapt to her company’s technology.  Ogura said, “It will make us expand our customers not only to Chemical and Agrochemical Companies, but also to other manufacturing [fields] such as medicine or food.”   Since Ogura’s company has been in existence for the past 2 years, we asked her for her opinion on how business differs between US and Japan.  She said, “In the US, each employee has authority, therefore decisions are made quickly. In Japan, we need a lot of approval in the organization [before] deciding on one thing.”

A Conversation with a Walt Disney Imagineer

A Conversation with Walt Disney Imagineer Jonathan Chew

Jonathan Chew, Blue Sky Program Manager at Walt Disney Imagineering, presented at this year’s ECE Day, hosted by the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department for its 50th anniversary. Chew detailing the relationship between imagination and engineering. Chew’s job as the Blue Sky Program Manager is to come up with the next big idea that then get incorporated into the Disney amusement parks. Check out this Q&A:

What is imagineering?

Imagineering is the blend of creative imagination and technical know-how. We work on all of the amazing theme parks and resorts around the world that are done by Disney.

Do you see a unifying trait in all Imagineers?

They’ve gotten to explore the world and have seen how things work, why things work, what makes things work. They ask the hard questions, such as “How can I improve this experience? What is fun for the guests who come to our parks everyday? How can I make that even better? How can I make that magical? How do I hide the technology so that the story shines through?” I tell people that they should be ‘T’-shaped. The big vertical bar of the ‘T’ is like your field of expertise. I am an electrical engineer, and that’s how I approach the world. The horizontal bar is sort of what makes imagineering imagineering - experience. Imagineers bring their experiences to the table during a brainstorm, during a design, during the project.

Do you have any advice for current engineering students?

Be more open-minded. It’s okay if you don’t find the solution right away. Talk to your teammates or be willing to listen to another person’s opinion. We all get into the zone where we’re like, “I’m just going to do this myself because I know how it’s done, I know the exact answer.”

Be open to accepting the thoughts and paradigms of all of those people around you, and also know what your strengths are. I am seeing it from a technical standpoint, and this is what’s important to keep in mind. But when you’re working on a team, you shouldn’t be stuck in your viewpoint.

Finally, think of yourself as creative. Sometimes, engineers don’t think they’re creative because they can’t draw or because they can’t sing or because they can’t dance, but creativity - I think the very definition of engineering is to build and to create - Arduino, Maker projects and just plain inventing. Create, create, create.

ECE Day 2016: Department Celebrates 50 Years

Electrical engineering students and industry professionals converged at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering on March 31, 2016 for ECE Day, hosted by the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department for its 50th anniversary. The day featured industry speakers, poster presentations featuring current research by ECE students and faculty, and Arduino workshops — even a jousting arena, lego competitions and a conversation with a Disney Imagineer!

Freshman computer engineer Elise Wong and senior electrical engineer Christopher Ellis of UC San Diego’s IEEE branch co-led the ECE Day planning committee, which included members of Tau Beta Pi (TBP), Etta Kappa Nu (HKN), the ECE Undergraduate Student Council. According Ellis, ECE Day was an idea that grew out of something else: “We originally wanted to invite industry to come in and tell students about the transition from school to the workforce.”

Logistical obstacles pushed the original event back, but Ellis says that the extra time allowed the planning team to make ECE Day a larger, more interactive event. Student organizations, including Divergent Engineering, Students for the Exploration and Development Space (SEDS), and Virtual Reality Club at UCSD (VR Club), showcased their current projects and encouraged interested students to join. In addition, Atmel Truck: Tech on Tour invited attendees into their trailer for an open house on Warren Mall.

Co-Founder of Qualcomm Irwin Jacobs gave a keynote speech regarding his life and career from academia to industry. Other speakers included Larry Stullich and David Pritchett, representatives of Northrop Grunman, and Slava Rokitski, who serves as Senior Manager of System Design at Cymer. Professor Mohan Trivedi and Assistant Professor Vikash Gilja of the ECE department also presented about their ongoing research projects.

Jacobs described how every student must decided whether or not they should attend graduate school, and specifically how he chose to apply to only a single school and fellowship, otherwise he would go directly into industry. “It hit home because I’m having the exact same thoughts,” Ellis said.

For the electrical engineers who attended, Ellis hopes they connected with potential opportunities to get involved, whether through student organizations or in faculty research. For future ECE Days, he wants to reach out more broadly to non-ECE majors and expose them to the exciting progress in the realm of electrical engineering.

“We want to get other students who are maybe bio majors or psychology majors to see what it’s like, to see what we’re doing, said Ellis.

Check out this post: A Conversation with A Walt Disney Imagineer

A Hackathon for Startups

Do you have an idea for a company? What about an unfinished project? Or perhaps you’re looking to try something completely new. You’re in luck! UC San Diego will host a one of a kind hackathon called STARTUP UCSD specifically for UC San Diego graduate and undergraduate startups May 13-14, 2016 at the RIMAC arena.

“For 24 hours you will be competing for over $15k in prizes, all aimed at getting your products to market,” said Martin Arreola, one of the students behind the event.

The top three teams that emerge from the hackathon will be invited to join the Qualcomm Institute Innovation Space.

The new incubator features a dedicated workspace with meeting rooms, legal advice and technical support, and access to the prototyping lab. In addition the teams will be given $5,000 of in-house credit.

“We’re expecting a lot of apps, some hardware and a few bioengineering products,” said Arreola. “The format will be a work session with mentors from industry that are available to provide advice to the teams. It doesn’t matter what stage the teams are at.”

Check out these frequently asked questions:

Q: Who's this for?
A: A good idea and a great team usually has the support of people from a variety of disciplines. This is why STARTUP UCSD is open to all, no matter if you're an engineer, an MBA student, or a Biology major, a graduate or undergraduate.

Q: What projects are you looking for?
A: Our judges will be scoring projects based on Functionality, Innovation, Design, and the Team’s promise. The top projects will have shown a prototype or idea that’s well thought-out, has a particular market in mind, and is backed by an agile, bright, and passionate group of hackers.

Q: Where and when is this happening?
A: STARTUP UCSD will be held at UC San Diego's largest venue, RIMAC Arena, from May 13-14. Connect with mentors, investors, cofounders, and sponsors, all ready to help you win and get your startup off the ground.

UCSD-TV: How the Defense and Aerospace Industries Shape San Diego’s Innovation Economy

UCSD TV recently posted this video from an "Innovation Crossroads" event co-presented by CONNECT and UC San Diego Extension. The event is moderated by James Fallows.

The full title of the event: Innovation Crossroads: From Drones to Cell Phones: How the Defense and Aerospace Industries Shape San Diego’s Innovation Economy

Key to San Diego's economy and identity are the aerospace and communications sectors, creating markets from drones to next-generation wireless communications. Explore the visionary technology igniting these industries and the implications this growth has to further propel San Diego as a leading global city. Featuring nationally celebrated journalist James Fallows of The Atlantic magazine and executives from global technology leaders ViaSat, Solar Turbines and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS).

Memorandum of Understanding with Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Jacobs School of Engineering Dean Albert P. Pisano shakes hands with Young-Ho Cho, of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) after signing a Memorandum of Understanding

The University of California, San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering will take part in an international collaboration with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) on precision medicine based on new technology.

The Memorandum of Understanding was signed on March 14 at the U.S.A-Korea Joint Symposium on N/MEMS and Bioengineering.

Jacobs School of Engineering Dean Albert P. Pisano gave the welcome at the event, which included presentations by Gordon Hoople, a PhD candidate in Pisano’s lab, and Kun Zhang, a professor in the Department of Bioengineering.

The objective of the collaboration is to establish a long-term fruitful platform for bilateral cooperation by means of joint research and education programs, technical information and research exchange programs between two parties.

Women in tech: how do to close the gap

For International Women's Day, Coursera asked two UC San Diego female teaching professors for their thoughts on Women in Tech. Mia Minnes and Christina Alvarado co-teach "Mastering the Software Engineering Interview" with teaching professor Leo Porter on Coursera.

Some thoughts from Alvarado:

In high school when I took my first real computer science class, I discovered that computer science was intriguing and challenging. For me, solving concrete problems was just plain fun. I was hooked.

 Over the early years of my career as a professor, the goal of increasing women’s participation in computer science moved from a hobby to a central goal of my teaching and research. I was distressed by women’s absence in a field that I found so fascinating

 At the heart of the tech industry, there’s a broad cultural change that needs to happen. It’s not about just pushing more women into computer classes or STEM disciplines from a young age. Women are still entering higher education and are confronted with barriers in a learning environment dominated by male students and instructors and later on, in the industry.

 We need to address the cultural issues and biases that are at the root of gender diversity, to make women feel that they are accepted and belong in computer science and the tech industry. The more people who acknowledge these biases publicly, from educational institutions to technology companies, the more we all will be able to confront this problem and work together to change it.

And some thoughts from Minnes:
 

Being a role model is something I take very seriously, and it’s something that my own experiences as a student in college have helped shape. As an undergraduate, I remember the jolt of realizing, almost every time I stepped into a lab or a lecture hall, that I was the only woman in the room or one of very few women.

Anyone embarking on a challenging field or project can benefit from having someone that they can relate to and look up to. I think it’s especially important to be able to see others who you can identify with and who have gone before you and succeeded.

 Many of the women who attend my office hours have told me this is the first time they’ve ever felt comfortable approaching one of their professors, not to mention participating in office hours. I think that’s very telling of just how crucial it is to have networks of women – both in the workplace and in education. They are essential to supporting them and further setting them on the path to succeed in the technology industry and their future career paths.

I agree with many who will tell you that mentorship isn’t the only solution, but I think it’s an important factor in empowering women to pursue their passions and follow their curiosity, whether it be in technology or any other field.