News Archive

March 1, 2006
Getting Down to Business: Student-Run Career Fair is a Record-Breaking Success
By any measure, the 2006 Disciplines of Engineering Career Fair (DECaF) was a success for both recruiters and student job seekers. The student-organized event raised $36,000 in corporate sponsorship fees, making it the largest single fundraiser to benefit engineering student organizations. In all, 50 companies sent over 150 recruiters to DECaF, more than doubling last year’s participation of 20 companies. Those employers saw nearly 1,500 engineering students eager for internship or full-time employment opportunities. Full Story

March 1, 2006
Bridge-Monitoring Poster Wins Grand Prize at 2006 Research Expo
Apresentation on bridge-performance monitoring by Hong Guan, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Structural Engineering, was judged the best poster at Research Expo 2006. Full Story

February 23, 2006
New Scholarship Fund to Help Aspiring Engineers in Region
Jacobs School undergraduates of limited means have a new avenue to fund their education, thanks to a QUALCOMM Inc. commitment of $250,000 for a new scholarship fund to help students pursuing engineering degrees at UCSD, SDSU or Cal State San Marcos. Full Story

February 15, 2006
Study Suggests 'Noise' in Gene Expression Could Aid Bacterial Pathogenicity
An experiment designed to show how a usually innocuous bacterium regulates the expression of an unnecessary gene for green color has turned up a previously unrecognized phenomenon that could partially explain a feature of bacterial pathogenicity. Full Story

February 13, 2006
Streaming Video from Information Theory and Applications Workshop
Faculty from Bioengineering, CSE and ECE were among more than 400 experts from around the world who participated in a weeklong workshop to inaugurate Calit2's new Information Theory and Applications (ITA) Center. Streaming video of key presentations and tutorials is now available for on-demand viewing. Full Story

February 10, 2006
UCSD Bioengineering Professor Elected to National Academy of Engineering
Bernhard O. Palsson, a professor of bioengineering and adjunct professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Full Story

February 5, 2006
Decoding Da Vinci, UCSD Alumnus Shows Stunning Discoveries
To a packed audience at Calit2, UCSD bioengineering alumnus Maurizio Seracini unveiled drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci that went unseen for 500 years, until Seracini used high-tech imaging techniques to look below the surface of Da Vinci's Adoration of the Magi. Full Story

February 1, 2006
Leading Scientists Help Guide New Nationwide Networking Infrastructure
Two of the eight experts appointed to a new Science Research Council for optical networking have appointments in the Jacobs School: Calit2 director Larry Smarr in Computer Science and Engineering; and UCSD neuroscientist Mark Ellisman, adjunct professor of Bioengineering. Full Story

January 24, 2006
Patterns in Genome Organization May Partially Explain How Microbial Cells Work
The location of a piece of real estate may be its most important feature to many Realtors, and bioengineering researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and the University of Virginia have reported that the location of genes and other features distributed along the chromosomes of bacteria and simpler organisms also is fundamentally important to how microbial cells operate. Full Story

December 21, 2005
Researchers Quantify More Noise in Gene Expression
A team of researchers at UCSD led by bioengineering professor Jeff Hasty report in the Dec. 21 issue of Nature a mathematical description of “extrinsic noise" in gene expression in a technique that would apply to other types of cells and other species. Full Story

December 16, 2005
Students Engineer a Digital Solution for Senior Care Provider
A team of UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering students has designed a system that is enabling nurses at St. Paul’s Senior Homes & Services to manage patient information via an easy-to-use computer interface. Full Story

December 15, 2005
How E. coli Bacterium Generates Simplicity from Complexity
Researchers at UCSD report in the Dec. 27 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that computer simulations show that only a handful of dominant metabolic states are found in E. coli even when it is “grown” in 15,580 different environments. Full Story

November 30, 2005
Engineers Discover Why Toucan Beaks Are Models of Lightweight Strength
Marc A. Meyers, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, reports in Acta Materialia that the secret to the toucan beak's lightweight strength is an unusual bio-composite. Full Story

November 29, 2005
UCSD Establishes Graduate Training Program Integrating Biomedical and Physical Sciences with Engineering
Nine graduate programs and thirteen departments at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) are collaborating in a new graduate educational program at the increasingly crucial interface of biology, medicine, and physical and engineering sciences. Full Story

November 2, 2005
Researchers Develop New Method To Find Deadly Malaria Parasite's Achilles Heel
A team of UCSD researchers led by bioengineering professor Trey Ideker has discovered that the single-cell parasite responsible for an estimated 1 million deaths per year worldwide from malaria has protein “wiring” that differs markedly from the cellular circuitry of other higher organisms, a finding which could lead to the development of antimalarial drugs that exploit that difference Full Story

November 1, 2005
Researchers Learn How Blood Vessel Cells Cope with their Pressure-Packed Job
UCSD researchers stretched cells in a workout chamber the size of a credit card to gain a better understanding of how repetitive stretching of endothelial cells that line arteries can make them healthy and resistant to vascular diseases. Full Story

October 21, 2005
Scientists Discover Secret Behind Human Red Blood Cell's Amazing Flexibility
A team of UCSD researchers discovered how a mesh-like protein skeleton gives a healthy human red blood cell both its rubbery ability to stretch without breaking, and a potential mechanism to facilitate diffusion of oxygen across its membrane. Full Story

October 3, 2005
Thinking Big with the Very Small: Focus of New Cancer Nanotechnology Center at UCSD
In a new national effort to fight cancer with “nanoscale” devices that find and destroy tumor cells while leaving healthy tissue unharmed, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) today awarded the University of California, San Diego $3.9 million in the first year of a five-year $20 million initiative to establish a Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence (CCNE). Full Story

September 30, 2005
Noise and Delays Explain Why Some Genes Oscillate in Activity
UCSD scientists report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the coupling of noise and time delay could also be an important factor in determining the variability in gene expression. Full Story

September 6, 2005
UCSD Bioengineering Professor Trey Ideker Named Top 35 Young Scientist by MIT's Technology Review Magazine
Trey Ideker, an assistant professor of bioengineering at UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering, has been named one of the nation’s top 35 innovators under age 35 by MIT’s Technology Review magazine. Full Story