News

June 27, 2014
Anouchka Mihaylova Bioengineering Award
An award for bioengineering students at UC San Diego has been created to honor Anouchka Mihaylova. A project scientist in the bioengineering department, Mihaylova died on May 17 after being struck by a hit-and-run driver while walking with her husband in Rancho Bernardo. Full Story

June 18, 2014
Outstanding Graduates from Class of 2014 Share Their Stories
Engineering swept the outstanding student awards at this year's All Campus Graduation Celebration. Damini Tandon, a bioengineering major, was recognized as outstanding undergraduate student for her efforts to make health education and medical treatment accessible. Michael Porter, a Ph.D. student in the research group of materials science professor Joanna McKittrick, received the outstanding graduate student award for his academic achievements and his mentoring. Full Story

June 4, 2014
Get Involved: Q&A with JUMP Mentoring Program Co-founder
Margie Mathewson, a Ph.D. student in bioengineering, is the co-founder of the Jacobs Undergraduate Mentoring Program, better known as JUMP. Within the past three years, the program went from serving 70 students to more than 300. Mathewson is getting ready to graduate and go out into industry. She will be starting work as a consultant for global management consulting firm McKinsey and Co. in Los Angeles in the fall. In this Q&A, she talks about her experiences here at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego and what decided her to get involved. Full Story

May 21, 2014
Remembering Anouchka Mihaylova
Anouchka Mihaylova, a project scientist in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, San Diego died on May 17 after being struck by a hit-and-run driver while walking with her husband in Rancho Bernardo. Mihaylova joined the department in 2000, where she was a researcher in the Cardiac Mechanics Laboratory led by bioengineering professor Andrew McCulloch in the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. Mihaylova was a key investigator of the National Biomedical Computation Resource. Full Story

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