News Archive
July 13, 2009
New Drugs Faster from Natural Compounds: a UC San Diego Breakthrough
Researchers have invented computational tools to decode and rapidly determine whether natural compounds collected in oceans and forests are new—or if these pharmaceutically promising compounds have already been described and are therefore not patentable. This University of California, San Diego advance will finally enable scientists to rapidly characterize ring-shaped nonribosomal peptides (NRPs)—a class of natural compounds of intense interest due to their potential to yield or inspire new pharmaceuticals. The study will be published in the July 13 online issue of journal Nature Methods. Full Story
July 7, 2009
Jacobs School Undergrads Go International this Summer with PRIME
Twenty four Jacobs School undergraduates are among the 33 University of California, San Diego undergraduates working as researchers in laboratories across the Pacific Rim and India this summer. Full Story
June 26, 2009
Bioengineering Grad Students are Finalists in $250K Global Business Plan Competition
University of California, San Diego bioengineering graduate students led by Raj Krishnan are among just 16 finalist teams from across the globe who will compete on June 30, 2009 for $250,000 in a global business plan competition. Full Story
June 16, 2009
At ENSPIRE Engineering Undergrads Inspire Local Eighth Graders
Imagine 420 eighth graders arriving at your doorstep and expecting you to inspire, teach, entertain and feed them all day. This is exactly the challenge the undergraduates from UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering took on earlier this year at ENSPIRE, one of the many events that make up Engineers Week at UC San Diego. Full Story
June 2, 2009
Cancer Diagnostics Startup from UC San Diego Bioengineering Win Entrepreneurship Competition
A team of bioengineering graduate students from the Jacobs School of Engineering won first place at the UC San Diego Entrepreneur Challenge for the business plan they built around their new early cancer diagnostic technology. The bioengineering students have already formed a startup company, Biological Dynamics, and they are currently seeking funding from investors. Full Story
May 29, 2009
How Oxidative Stress May Help Prolong Life
Oxidative stress has been linked to aging, cancer and other diseases in humans. Paradoxically, researchers have suggested that small exposure to oxidative conditions may actually offer protection from acute doses. Now, scientists at the University of California, San Diego, have discovered the gene responsible for this effect. Full Story
May 11, 2009
Technology for Early-Cancer Diagnosis Leads Bioengineering Grad Student to Many Prizes and a Startup Company
For breakthroughs aimed at early-stage cancer diagnostics, Raj Krishnan, a bioengineering Ph.D. student at the University of California, San Diego has taken home three first place awards at graduate research competitions this year. Not pausing to polish his awards, Krishnan has co-founded Biological Dynamics, a startup company aimed at transferring the new cancer diagnostic technology from the laboratory to the clinic. Full Story
April 22, 2009
New Method Developed by UC San Diego Bioengineers Gives Regenerative Medicine a Boost
Bioengineers at UC San Diego have developed a breakthrough method for sequencing-based methylation profiling, which could help fuel personalized regenerative medicine and even lead to more efficient and cost-effective methods for studying certain diseases. Full Story
April 20, 2009
How Cells Change Gears: New Insights Published in Nature Genetics
Bioinformatics researchers from UC San Diego just moved closer to unlocking the mystery of how human cells switch from “proliferation mode” to “specialization mode.” This computational biology work from the Jacobs School of Engineering’s bioengineering department could lead to new ideas for curbing unwanted cell proliferation—including some cancers. This research, published in Nature Genetics, could also improve our understanding of how organs and other complex tissues develop. Full Story
April 9, 2009
Life Sticks: Bioengineer Publishes Sticky Insights in journal Science
Sticky is good. A University of California, San Diego bioengineer is the first author on an article in the journal Science that provides insights on the “stickiness of life.” The big idea is that cells, tissues and organisms hailing from all limbs of the tree of life respond to stimuli using basic biological “modules.” Full Story
March 12, 2009
Bioengineering Professor Trey Ideker Wins 2009 Overton Prize
UC San Diego bioengineering professor Trey Ideker has won the International Society for Computational Biology’s Overton Prize. Full Story
January 28, 2009
UC San Diego Engineers Develop Novel Method for Accelerated Bone Growth
Engineers at the University of California at San Diego have come up with a way to help accelerate bone growth through the use of nanotubes and stem cells. Full Story
December 26, 2008
A Better View for Surgeons During Minimally Invasive Surgeries
A multidisciplinary team of researchers at the UC San Diego division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) is nearing completion of their first prototype of “SurgiCam,” a tiny surgical camera that can be inserted through a 1.5 cm incision in the abdomen during minimally invasive surgery (MIS). Full Story
December 15, 2008
Hands-on Engineering Design Course Presentations: Monitoring Heart Rate Variability and More
ECE 191, Engineering Group Design Project, is an upper-division class that provides undergraduate students with hands-on experience working in a team to design, build, demonstrate and document an open-ended engineering project. Full Story
November 20, 2008
Jessica Godin, Electrical Engineer, Wins R.B. Woolley Leadership Award
Jessica Godin came to UC San Diego in 2004 to pursue a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. Now on the home-stretch of her Ph.D. at the Jacobs School of Engineering, Godin has won the annual R.B. Woolley Graduate Leadership Award. Full Story
October 29, 2008
Genetic Clock Makers at UC San Diego Publish Their Timepiece in Nature
UC San Diego bioengineers have created the first stable, fast and programmable genetic clock that reliably keeps time by the blinking of fluorescent proteins inside E. coli cells. The clock’s blink rate changes when the temperature, energy source or other environmental conditions change, a fact that could lead to new kinds of sensors that convey information about the environment through the blinking rate. Full Story
October 22, 2008
NanoEngineer Wins Grant to Develop Field-Hospital-on-a-Chip Technology
With a $1.6M grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR), UC San Diego NanoEngineering professor Joseph Wang will lead a project to create a field-hospital-on-a-chip technology that soldiers can wear on the battlefield. Full Story
October 13, 2008
NIH Awards $38 Million Grant Renewal to UC San Diego For Lipid Mapping Project
Shankar Subramaniam, professor and chair of the bioengineering department, is part of a $38M NIH renewal grant for “LIPID MAPS,” a national consortium studying the structure and function of lipids. Full Story