News Archive
October 11, 2006
NSF Renews Pacific Rim Grid Engineering Project
The NSF has renewed PRAGMA, a UCSD-based effort to promote cyberinfrastructure research interactions among U.S. and Pacific Rim engineers and scientists, including many from the Jacobs School. The program is a collaborative effort of SDSC, Calit2 and Center for Research in Biological Systems. Full Story
October 9, 2006
UCSD Developing New Genome Sequencing Technology
The current cost to determine the sequence of nucleotide bases in the 6-billion-base-pair human genome is roughly $10 million, but researchers at UC San Diego and eight other universities and biotech companies hope to use a federal grant to lower the cost to only $1,000 per human genome sequenced Full Story
October 2, 2006
Jacobs School Welcomes Eleven New Faculty
The Jacobs School welcomes 11 new faculty hires, bringing the School’s total faculty membership to 175. The new faculty help advance the School’s focus on nanotechnology and nanomaterials, and compliment existing strengths in earthquake engineering, broadband communications, computer architecture, information theory, machine learning, and visualization. Full Story
September 19, 2006
UCSD Ranks Among World's Top Biotech Hotbeds
UC San Diego, long recognized for its pivotal role in seeding what has become one of the largest and most dense biotech sectors in the nation, was ranked among the top universities in the world for its prowess in developing and translating biotechnology into medical treatments, drugs, and other commercial applications. The 300-page study, Mind to Market: A Global Analysis of University Biotechnology Transfer and Commercialization, released today by The Milken Institute, examines and ranks universities worldwide on several key factors that measure biotechnology development and transfer success, including published research, patents issued and commercial outcomes. Full Story
September 15, 2006
Shu Chien named to Y.C. Fung Endowed Chair in Bioengineering
UCSD today announced that Shu Chien has been appointed the inaugural holder of the Y.C. Fung Endowed Chair in Bioengineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering. Chien, director of the UCSD Whitaker Institute of Biomedical Engineering and former chair of the Jacobs School of Engineering’s Department of Bioengineering, is a world leader in understanding how blood flow and pressure affect blood vessels. Full Story
August 7, 2006
Researchers Devise New Tools to Help Pinpoint Treatments for Heart Failure
UCSD scientists studying heart cells have devised a new way to visualize and quantify the rise and fall in the activity of a key enzyme linked to heart failure, offering them a window to the inner workings of heart cells that is expected to help in the development of more effective drugs to treat heart failure. Full Story
July 12, 2006
Beyond Lipids: Understanding the Mechanics of Atherosclerosis
A study in the October issue of Cellular Signalling by a team of UCSD scientists reports that the type of mechanical stretching found at branches of blood vessels activates a cellular protein known to damage cells. The report is the first to link mechanical forces with structural and biochemical changes in blood vessel cells that could explain why atherosclerotic lesions form preferentially at branches of coronary arteries. Full Story
June 16, 2006
Cells Use Mix-and-Match Approach to Tailor Regulation of Genes
Pharmaceutical companies are hoping to develop drugs that selectively block the binding of transcription factors to upstream sequences of genes as a way to short-circuit the harmful effects of diseases, and researchers at the University of California, San Diego on June 16 reported new findings that could aid that effort. Full Story
May 22, 2006
UC San Diego's Entrepreneurism Center Funds Nine New Faculty Projects for Technology Commercialization
UCSD's von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism and Technology Advancement has awarded approximately $430,000 to nine projects led by faculty from the Jacobs School of Engineering. The projects include a bioengineered treatment for anemia; and a miniature camera for certain types of minimally invasive surgery. Full Story
May 18, 2006
Cell, Heal Thyself: New Systems Biology Model Reveals How Cells Repair DNA Damage
Researchers at UCSD and three other institutions have described for the first time a web of inter-related responses that cells use to avoid becoming diseased or cancerous after being exposed to a powerful chemical mutagen. The group led by UCSD bioengineering professor Trey Ideker describe in the May 19 issue of Science an elaborate system of gene control that is triggered by chemical damage to DNA. Full Story
April 24, 2006
Shu Chien Elected Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Shu Chien is one of six scholars from the University of California, San Diego named today as Fellows of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Chien directs the Whitaker Institute of Biomedical Engineering and is a university professor of bioengineering and medicine. Full Story
April 18, 2006
UCSD Joins MentorNet, Connecting Students with Scientists and Engineers Employed in Industry and Academia
UCSD has become a partner in MentorNet, a program that uses email to facilitate one-on-one mentoring relationships between successful engineers, scientists and mathematicians, and college students who aspire to careers in those fields. Full Story
April 14, 2006
UC San Diego Scientists Chart Rapid Advances of Fluorescent Tools for Life-Science Research
An interdisciplinary team of biological imaging experts including Bioengineering adjunct professor Mark Ellisman has published a review of fluorescent imaging technologies in the life sciences, featured on the cover of the journal Science. Full Story
April 5, 2006
Two UCSD Engineers Awarded $1 Million Teaching Grants from Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Two Jacobs School professors -- bioengineer Robert Sah and computer scientist Pavel Pevzner -- will receive $1 million each over four years to develop innovative educational programs to "ignite the scientific spark in a new generation of students." Full Story
March 22, 2006
Two Jacobs School Professors Selected for Chancellor's Associates Faculty Excellence Awards
Bioengineering professor Bernhard Palsson and Computer Science and Engineering professor Geoffrey Voelker have been honored by UCSD with two of the five Chancellor's Associates Faculty Excellence Awards for 2006. Full Story
March 20, 2006
Two UCSD Bioengineering Professors Recognized as Pioneers in Emerging Field of Comparative Interactomics
Technology Review, MIT’s magazine of technology, has highlighted two bioengineering professors at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Jacobs School of Engineering, as pioneers of one of 10 “emerging technologies” that the magazine predicts will soon transform computing, medicine, telecommunications, and business. Full Story
March 15, 2006
UCSD Computer Scientist Works with Cancer Researchers to Understand How Cancer Genomes Evolve
CSE bioinformatics postdoc Ben Raphael and professor Pavel Pezner co-author Genome Research article with UCSF cancer researchers on rearrangements of a breast cancer tumor genome. Full Story
March 8, 2006
Summer Science Program for High School Students Expands Enrollment
The COSMOS program administered by the Jacobs School will bring nearly 50 percent more talented high school students to the UCSD campus for a month this summer, with a March 16 deadline for applications. Full Story