News
October 16, 2014
Nineteen new faculty join the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego
Nineteen new faculty members will join the Jacobs School of Engineering this year, which is growing to meet the intense demand for its engineering education programs. Full Story
October 3, 2014
Biomedical Engineers Win 'People's Choice' Award for Inspiring Video
The National Academy of Engineering named a group of University of California, San Diego bioengineering students as the “People’s Choice” award winner in a video contest celebrating the 50th anniversary of the NAE. The Biomedical Engineering Society at UC San Diego received $5,000 in prize money for their award-winning video titled “The Future is Boundless.” Full Story
October 2, 2014
Diabetes in a Dish
Although type 1 diabetes can be controlled with insulin injections and lifestyle modifications, major advances in treating the disease have not been made in more than two decades and there remain fundamental gaps in what is understood about its causes and how to halt its progression.With a 5-year, $4-million grant from the National Institutes of Health, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and bioengineers at UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, with colleagues at UC Irvine and Washington University in St. Louis hope to change this. Full Story
October 1, 2014
Jacobs School Recruiting for 16 Positions in 2014-15
The Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego is recruiting for 16 open faculty positions in the 2014-15 academic year. Currently, four recruitments have been posted—each of which can lead to more than one hire. The positions are focused through cluster hires in robotics, materials and energy, advanced manufacturing, information sciences, engineering and clinical medicine, and more. Full Story
August 29, 2014
Scientists sequence complete genome of E. coli Strain responsible for food poisoning
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have produced the first complete genome sequencing of a strain of E. coli that is a common cause of outbreaks of food poisoning in the United States. Although the E. coli strain EDL933 was first isolated in the 1980s, it gained national attention in 1993 when it was linked to an outbreak of food poisoning from Jack-in-the-Box restaurants in the western United States. Their paper published online Aug. 14 in the journal Genome Announcements reports the full, complete sequence with no gaps. Their analysis includes so-called jumping genes that can move around the same genome, sometimes causing damage to individual genes or enabling antibiotic resistance. Full Story
August 11, 2014
Matrix Stiffness is an Essential Tool in Stem Cell Differentiation
Bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego have proven that when it comes to guiding stem cells into a specific cell type, the stiffness of the extracellular matrix used to culture them really does matter. The research team, led by bioengineering professor Adam Engler, also found that a protein binding the stem cell to the hydrogel is not a factor in the differentiation of the stem cell as previously suggested. The protein layer is merely an adhesive, the team reported Aug. 10 in the advance online edition of the journal Nature Materials. Full Story
August 1, 2014
Tumor Suppressor Mutations Alone Don't Explain Deadly Cancer
Although mutations in a gene dubbed “the guardian of the genome” are widely recognized as being associated with more aggressive forms of cancer, physicians and bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have found evidence suggesting that the deleterious health effects of the mutated gene may in large part be due to other genetic abnormalities, at least in squamous cell head and neck cancers. The study, published online Aug. 3 in the journal Nature Genetics, shows that high mortality rates among head and neck cancer patients tend to occur only when mutations in the tumor suppressor gene coincide with missing segments of genetic material on the cancer genome’s third chromosome. Full Story
July 29, 2014
UC San Diego Engineering Graduates Aim For Game-Changing Green Chemistry
San Diego-based company Genomatica, co-founded by UC San Diego bioengineering alumnus Christophe Schilling, sustainably produces chemicals essential in the manufacture of thousands of products from fabrics to plastics. Full Story
July 28, 2014
Jacobs School Faculty Among the World's Most Influential Scientists
Several Jacobs School professors have been named among the most influential scientists in the world by Thomson Reuters. Congratulations to Bernhard Palsson in bioengineering, Yuri Bazilevs in structural engineering and Joseph Wang in nanoengineering. The list compiles the most highly cited researchers in the sciences and social sciences from 2002-2013. Full Story
July 17, 2014
A GEM of a Prize
Two physician-engineer teams from UC San Diego have been selected as the 2014 recipients of the Galvanizing Engineering in Medicine (GEM) awards from the Clinical and Translational Research Institute (CTRI) and the Institute of Engineering in Medicine (IEM). GEM, an initiative of UC San Diego's CTRI and IEM, supports projects that identify clinical challenges for which engineering solutions can be developed and implemented to improve health care. Full Story