News Archive
January 22, 2010
Jacobs School Diversity Organizations Win Award
Congratulations to the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering’s undergraduate chapters of the National Society of Black Engineers, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and the Society of Women Engineers. This trio of undergraduate engineering diversity professional organizations won a 2009 UC San Diego Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action and Diversity Award. Full Story
January 20, 2010
UC San Diego Researchers Synchronize Blinking Genetic Clocks
Researchers at UC San Diego who last year genetically engineered bacteria to keep track of time by turning on and off fluorescent proteins within their cells have taken another step toward the construction of a programmable genetic sensor. The scientists recently synchronized these bacterial “genetic clocks” to blink in unison and engineered the bacterial genes to alter their blinking rates when environmental conditions change. Full Story
January 5, 2010
Jacobs School Video Contest
Calling all Jacobs School engineering students—both undergrads and graduate students. Share you best video stories about your research, academic experiences and engineering-related projects. Full Story
January 4, 2010
UCSD Bioengineering Pioneer Honored for Advancing Science Across Continents
For Shu Chien – a pioneer in the growing field of bioengineering – understanding and learning the marvels of how the human body works has been the foundation of his decades-long quest to advance science and technology worldwide. Full Story
December 8, 2009
Supportive Materials will Help Regenerate Heart Tissue
Bioengineers from University of California, San Diego are developing new regenerative therapies for heart disease that could influence the way in which regenerative therapies for cardiovascular and other diseases are treated in the future. Full Story
November 19, 2009
Systems Biology Approach Provides Insulin Resistance Insights
Researchers from the University of California, San Diego recently offered the sharpest-yet picture of how core biochemical pathways in skeletal muscle cells and fat cells are altered in people who suffer from insulin resistance—a primary defect in type 2 diabetes and obesity. Taking a systems biology approach, the bioengineers and medical researchers also determined how a common class of drugs for treating insulin resistance—TZDs—alter these same core pathways. This led the team to uncover previously unknown effects of TZDs and insights that could lead to improved drug therapies for insulin resistance. Full Story
November 3, 2009
University of California, San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering Ranked 9th in the World
The University of California, San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering is the 9th best in the world for engineering/technology and 15th in the world for computer sciences, according to an academic ranking of the top 100 world universities published by the Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Full Story
October 8, 2009
UCSD Researchers Pave the Way for Effective Liver Treatments
A combination of bioengineering and medical research at the University of California, San Diego has led to a new discovery that could pave the way for more effective treatments for liver disease. Full Story
September 25, 2009
Bioengineer is One of Five UCSD Recipients of NIH Awards to Encourage High-Risk Research and Innovation
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced $348 million in awards nationwide to encourage investigators to explore bold ideas that have the potential to catapult fields forward and speed the translation of research into improved health. Bioengineering Assistant Professor Adam Engler is one of five researchers from the University of California, San Diego to have been awarded such a grant in 2009. Full Story
September 25, 2009
Comprehensive Understanding of Bacteria Could Lead to New Insights into Many Organisms
Investigators at Burnham Institute for Medical Research (Burnham), University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego), The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) and other institutions have constructed a complete model, including three dimensional protein structures, of the central metabolic network of the bacterium Thermotoga maritima (T. maritima). Full Story
September 22, 2009
Siebel Foundation Awards Top UC San Diego Bioengineering Graduate Students
As breakthrough discoveries in bioengineering become more crucial to fundamental global issues, including health, food production and water supplies, UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering’s top ranked bioengineering department continues to be on the cutting edge of this field. The Siebel Foundation has recognized the Jacob School’s pioneering efforts with a $2 million endowment to fund scholarships for some of its top bioengineering graduate students. Full Story
July 16, 2009
UC San Diego NanoTumor Center and NanoTecNexus Win Telly Award for Educational Video
The University of California, San Diego NanoTumor Center and NanoTecNexus (NTN) (formerly NanoBioNexus)—a leading nanotech education organization—won the 2009 Bronze Telly Award for the production of a video on approaches to fighting cancer using nanotechnology. The three minute video, entitled “Fighting Cancer with Nanotechnology,” is embedded below and can be viewed at NanoTecNexus, YouTube and around the Web. Full Story
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