News Archive
May 12, 2014
An Interview with 2014 Research Expo Winner Ya-San Yeh
Ya-San Yeh, a University of California, San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering graduate student won the grand prize at Research Expo 2014 on April 17 for her research on silica nanoparticles for cancer treatment. Yeh received the Rudee Outstanding Poster Award as well as the best departmental poster in bioengineering. We caught up with Yeh after the big win to talk about her research and what it is like to work on a problem as big as cancer. Updated May 14 with videos of Research Expo faculty talks. Full Story
May 6, 2014
Nanoengineers develop basis for electronics that stretch at the molecular level
Nanoengineers at the University of California, San Diego are asking what might be possible if semiconductor materials were flexible and stretchable without sacrificing electronic function? Full Story
April 18, 2014
Silica Nanoparticles for Cancer Treatment Take Top Prize at Research Expo 2014
Ya-San Yeh, a University of California, San Diego graduate student working in the laboratory of electrical engineering and nanoengineering professor Sadik Esener, won the grand prize at Research Expo 2014 for her research on silica nanoparticles for cancer treatment. Yeh received the Rudee Outstanding Poster Award as well as the best departmental poster in bioengineering. Full Story
April 9, 2014
Researchers Develop Bacterial 'FM Radio'
Programming living cells offers the prospect of harnessing sophisticated biological machinery for transformative applications in energy, agriculture, water remediation and medicine. Inspired by engineering, researchers in the emerging field of synthetic biology have designed a tool box of small genetic components that act as intracellular switches, logic gates, counters and oscillators. But scientists have found it difficult to wire the components together to form larger circuits that can function as “genetic programs.” One of the biggest obstacles? Dealing with a small number of available wires. A team of biologists and engineers at UC San Diego has taken a large step toward overcoming this obstacle. Their advance, detailed in a paper which appears in this week’s advance online publication of the journal Nature, describes their development of a rapid and tunable post-translational coupling for genetic circuits. This advance builds on their development of “biopixel” sensor arrays reported in Nature by the same group of scientists two years ago. Full Story
April 4, 2014
Engineering a New Biomaterial Therapy for Treating Heart Attacks
Bioengineering professor Karen Christman's new injectable hydrogel, which is designed to repair damaged cardiac tissue following a heart attack, has been licensed to San Diego-based startup Ventrix, Inc, which is planning the first human clinical trials of the technology. Full Story
April 2, 2014
Understanding How the Brain Controls Movement
A University of California, San Diego research team led by bioengineering professor Gert Cauwenberghs is working to understand how the brain circuitry controls how we move. The goal is to develop new technologies to help patients with Parkinson's disease and other debilitating medical conditions navigate the world on their own. Their research is funded by the National Science Foundation’s Emerging Frontiers of Research and Innovation program. Full Story
March 27, 2014
Cymer Co-Founder Richard Sandstrom and Wife, Sandra Timmons, Give $1.2 Million for Students
University of California, San Diego alumni Sandra Timmons and Richard Sandstrom, co-founder of Cymer, Inc., are passionate about their alma mater and helping future students achieve the same world-class education they received at UC San Diego. That’s why the couple recently pledged a gift of $1.2 million to the campus for student support through their charitable Timmstrom Family Fund. The gift will be split, per the donors’ wishes, to support graduate students in the Jacobs School of Engineering and undergraduates through the Chancellor’s Associates Scholars program. Full Story
March 26, 2014
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a...pie?
Move over watermelons and pumpkins! There’s a new addition to the list of things that are being dropped from the top of UC San Diego’s buildings—pie. To be more precise, a 13-inch, 4.5 pounds cherry pie from Costco, which was dropped from the third floor of the Structural and Materials Engineering building. It was all part of Pi Day celebrations March 14 at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego. Fun for the day also included the third annual Pi-Mile Run and Walk, which set a record for turnout, with more than 200 people taking part. Full Story
March 17, 2014
Study finds that fast-moving cells in the human immune system walk in a stepwise manner
A team of biologists and engineers at UC San Diego applied advanced mathematical tools to answer a basic question in cell biology about how cells move and discovered that the mechanism looks very similar to walking. Their discovery, published March 17 in the Journal of Cell Biology, is an important advance toward developing new pharmacological strategies to treat chronic inflammatory diseases. Full Story
March 11, 2014
New UC San Diego Biosensor Will Guard Water Supplies from Toxic Threats
Supported by a $953,958 grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), researchers at the University of California San Diego will develop a sophisticated new biosensor that can protect the nation’s water supplies from a wide range of toxins, including heavy metals and other poisons. The project, led by Jeff Hasty, director of the BioCircuits Institute at UC San Diego, will combine next-generation sequencing, synthetic biology, and microfluidic technologies to engineer a highly specific array of biosensors that will continuously monitor water supplies for the presence of toxins. Full Story
March 7, 2014
Dive into Technology's Future at Research Expo 2014
Research Expo will be held on Thursday, April 17, from 1:30 p.m. to 6p.m. Register today. The annual event features research posters by more than 200 engineering graduate students from UC San Diego, faculty talks, and a networking reception with faculty, students, industry partners and alumni. Full Story
February 28, 2014
Bioengineering Students Recognized for Outstanding Research
Several bioengineering students have been recognized for their outstanding research. Full Story
January 30, 2014
Studying Stem Cell Diets to Make Better Heart Cells
What nutrients are needed for stem cells to grow and function as heart cells? That’s the question at the heart of research led by bioengineer Christian Metallo at the University of California, San Diego. He is one of eight UC San Diego researchers to receive a combined total of $8.165 million in funding from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine in a new round of Basic Biology awards announced Jan. 29. Metallo’s share is $1.124 million. The awards were made by CIRM’s Independent Citizens Oversight Committee. Full Story
January 24, 2014
UC San Diego Highlighted in Governor's State of the State Address
As Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. delivered his annual State of the State address to the Legislature yesterday, he highlighted the University of California, San Diego as a leader in developing medical and scientific advances. In prepared remarks, Gov. Brown noted, “Four out of the world’s 20 leading academic bioscience institutions are located here in California: UCSF and Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford and UC San Diego. Just as California has led the way with stem cell research, so too can we pioneer the new field of precision medicine which uses genomics, medical devices, computer sciences and other fields to treat individual patients, instead of broad populations.” Full Story
January 14, 2014
Single-Cell Genome Sequencing Gets Better
Bioengineers at the Jacobs School have created a better way to sequence genomes from individual cells. The breakthrough, which relies on microwells just 12 nanoliters in volume (see image below), is one of many recent "omics" innovations from researchers across the Jacobs School and UC San Diego. The single-cell genome sequencing advance from Kun Zhang's lab could help researchers understand what causes Alzheimer's disease. The work could also enable scientists to identify tough-to-culture microbes living in ocean water and within the human body-by probing single cells. Full Story
January 9, 2014
How to Manage Mobile Medical App Development Under FDA Regulation
A consortium of six leading universities, more than a dozen industry trade associations and professional societies, and the U.S. Food & Drug Administration announced their unprecedented collaboration to develop a series of educational programs designed to help mobile app developers learn about FDA requirements for producing higher risk medical apps as well as the business issues associated with entering this space.Called the “MMA Roadshow: Managing App Development under FDA Regulation,” the four-hour workshops are scheduled over several months across the country, including Jan. 27 at the University of California, San Diego. Full Story
January 6, 2014
Biomaterials Get Stem Cells to Commit to a Bony Future
With the help of biomimetic matrices, a research team led by bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego has discovered exactly how calcium phosphate can coax stem cells to become bone-building cells. This work is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of Jan. 6, 2014. Full Story
December 13, 2013
2013: The Year in Review
From the largest alumni gift in the campus’ history, which went to the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, to the arrival of Dean Al Pisano, it’s been a busy year here at the Jacobs School of Engineering. The school produced many research milestones, from a Google map of the human metabolism to the world’s first zoomable contact lens. Students got into the action too and UC San Diego became the first university to design, build and test a 3D-printed rocket engine. Here are some of the most memorable stories of the year—but not all: the list would be too long. Full Story
November 25, 2013
Bioengineering Professor Among Six UC San Diego Faculty Named 2013 AAAS Fellows
Six professors at the University of California, San Diego have been named 2013 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the nation’s largest general science organization. Full Story
November 18, 2013
New Models Predict Where E. coli Strains Will Thrive
Bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego have used the genomic sequences of 55 E. coli strains to reconstruct the metabolic repertoire for each strain. Surprisingly, these reconstructions do an excellent job of predicting the kind of environment where each strain will thrive, the researchers found. Their analysis, published in the Nov. 18, 2013 early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could prove useful in developing ways to control deadly E. coli infections and to learn more about how certain strains of the bacteria become virulent. Full Story