Jacobs School computer science professor Rajesh Gupta has been appointed an Associate Director in the UC San Diego division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). He says he hopes to do for the institute overall what he has been doing in his chosen field of wireless and embedded systems all along: reach out to industry.

CSE Associate Professor Ingolf Krueger has been appointed Director of the new Bernard and Sophia Gordon Engineering Leadership Center The Center's mission is to educate and train effective engineering leaders who create new products and jobs that benefit society.

Assistant Professor Alex Snoeren presented research at the Center for Networked Systems' latest Research Review that argues against the Internet's standard Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). Snoeren envisions a radically remade Internet where, even if some packets are dropped, all the information makes it from sender to receiver. This would be done via "erasure coding," where portions of information are duplicated on multiple packets. If senders no longer had to be mindful of losing packets, they could transmit more quickly, which would likely increase throughput rates. Click here for more information about Snoeren's research.

UC San Diego is the world's ninth best university for engineering/technology and computer sciences, according to a new subject-specific ranking from the Academic Rankings of World Universities (ARWU). This university ranking project is run by the Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. In 2006, the ARWU placed UC San Diego thirteenth among the world's top 1,000 universities. The top-ten list and a full press release is available here.

Titled "Igniting Innovation," the expo will feature a poster session, technical breakout sessions, and remarks by Alan Eustace, VP of Research and Systems Engineering at Google. February 22, 2007, 8:30AM - 2:00PM. More details (including information on how to register for the event) are available here.

On Friday, February 25, 2005, the Jacobs School of Engineering and the Corporate Affiliate Program (CAP) hosted the 24th annual Research Expo. The morning started with breakfast hosted by Raytheon and the chance to view over 200 research posters by Jacobs School graduate students. Plenary guest speakers included Professor Pavel Pevzner of the Computer Science Engineering department of the Jacobs School of Engineering at UCSD and Dr. Judith L. Swain, of Stanford University speaking on the California's Stem Cell Initiative. In the afternoon Technical Breakout sessions were presented by each of the five academic departments of the Jacobs School. CSE break out sessions included presentations by CSE faculty on Community-based Information Exchange, Data Mining, High-Performance Chip Multiprocessor Architectures and The Structure of Human Genetic Variation.

Assistant Professor Alex Snoeren presented research at the Center for Networked Systems' latest Research Review that argues against the Internet's standard Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). Snoeren envisions a radically remade Internet where, even if some packets are dropped, all the information makes it from sender to receiver. This would be done via "erasure coding," where portions of information are duplicated on multiple packets. If senders no longer had to be mindful of losing packets, they could transmit more quickly, which would likely increase throughput rates. Click here for more information about Snoeren's research.

With the announcement of this year's COSMOS program, the department of Computer Science & Engineering will again be taking part in this program that gives talented high school students a taste of college life. COSMOS (California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science) is a month-long residential program designed to encourage students to continue their interest in science. The curriculum is broken into seven units known as clusters. This year's computer science cluster will be titled "Adventures in Media Computing" and will be overseen by Professor Joe Pasquale. CSE lecturers Paul Kube and Beth Simon (along with Christine Alvarado from Harvey Mudd College) will assist. Read the full article and visit the COSMOS website for more information.

Larry Smarr and Marv Frazier of the J. Craig Venter Institute are leading a new research project to help scientists study microbes in their natural ecosystems. CAMERA, or the Community Cyberinfrastructure for Advanced Marine Microbial Ecology Research and Analysis, will build a state-of-the-art computational resource and develop software tools to decipher the genetic code of communities of microbial life in the world's oceans. UCSD's Calit2 (of which Smarr is director) will head the project in conjunction with the J. Craig Venter Institute, and UCSD's Center for Earth Observations and Applications. CSE's Ingolf Krueger is a co-PI on the project, which is funded by a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Please see the San Diego Union-Tribune and Jacobs School of Engineering for complete coverage.

The Jacobs School of Engineering's annual awards banquet recognized several current and former CSE affiliates at this year's festivities. Lecturer Rick Ord was honored with the Tau Beta Pi Teacher of the Year Award. Rick is a popular instructor who has previously been honored with a slew of previous teaching awards at UCSD. The Digital Nursing Project, overseen by CSE's Bill Griswold, was recognized with the Teams in Engineering Service Award. Digital Nursing replaces hand-written logs with software to track patient information. JSOE also honored Dogan Koslu, '90, with the Outstanding Alumnus Award. Koslu is the founder of Treyarch, an Activision studio that produces computer games. A full list of awardees can be found online here.

Researchers from Calit2's WIISARD project (Wireless Internet Information System for Medical Response in Disasters) successfully demonstrated their mass-casualty patient tracking system during the California EMS Authority's annual Rough and Ready on May 7, the largest state-wide emergency preparedness exercise. WIISARD enables the creation of real-time electronic medical records of victims triaged at disaster scenes. This information, both aggregated and individually, is available to medical personnel throughout a deployed WIISARD system: supervisors at the scene, the command center, and at the receiving hospital. WIISARD brings together broad-based participation from UCSD's School of Medicine and Jacobs School of Engineering, industry, the military, and emergency responders from the City and County of San Diego. Click hereto read more about the disaster drill.

CSE professor Serge Belongie is leading a computer vision research initiative to create tools that give better independence to the visually impaired. A collaborative effort with Calit2 and the University of Kentucky, the project is still in an early development phase. If it receives sufficient funding, Belongie and collaborators hope to create portable devices that "see" and help the visually impaired do things such as shop for groceries by themselves. More information about this project is available here.

Jeanne Ferrante, CSE professor and Associate Dean at the Jacobs School of Engineering, and Francine Berman, CSE professor and Director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, sat down together to talk about pressing issues facing women in engineering in anticipation of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computer 2006 conference in San Diego. You can read a transcript of the conversation here.

CSE researchers Bill Griswold, Barry Demchak, and Neil McCurdy worked alongside fire, police, hazardous materials, and SWAT officials to test their first-responder technology at a disaster drill organized by San Diego's Metropolitan Medical Strike Team (MMST). Among the tools tested was Griswold's WIISARD, a communications infrastructure and software system, and Command Center, a software designed by Barry Demchak. Also deployed was RealityFlyThrough, a program co-developed by Griswold and McCurdy that allows an early arriver to capture images and video using a helmet-mounted camera. For more information about the drill, click here.

CSE's Bill Griswold, along with a team of 11 undergrads, recently visited St. Paul's Senior Homes & Services to unveil a piece of software they designed to improve patient information management. The tool tracks changes in the condition of each patient and negates the need for a hand-written log book that can be messy, illegible, and error-prone. The Digital Nursing Project is part of UCSD's Teams in Engineeering Services (TIES), a program that creates technology solutions for non-profits. More information about TIES and its Digital Nursing program can be found here.

CSE's Amin Vahdat has been named the new director of the Center for Networked Systems. An Associate Professor at CSE, Vahdat becomes CNS' second director since its establishment in July of 2004. Vahdat takes the reins from founding director Andrew Chien, who left to join Intel Corporation as Director of Research. The full press release can be found here.

Calit2, UCSD's division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, opened their new building on Friday, October 28, 2005. Affiliated with the Jacobs School of Engineering, the Institute is a multidisciplinary research hub that fosters innovation by professors from all over UCSD, including the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. More information about the ceremony is available here.

The Jacobs School hosted its 4th annual Research Review February 28, 2003. This year's theme, Data to Decision, explored DNA databases to video and sensor networks while speakers discussed their new systems for analyzing data and for putting the data to use in predicting, assessing and responding to today's challenges. [Read More...]

Dr. Frieder Seible has been appointed Dean of the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering. Dr. Seible has served as Interim Dean of the Jacobs School since July of 2002, and previously was the founding Chair of the Department of Structural Engineering, and Director of the Charles Lee Powell Structural Research Laboratories. Dr. Seible is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a visionary leader, an internationally acclaimed expert in bridge design and earthquake engineering, and deeply committed to students and education. [Read More...]

The University of California, San Diego (UCSD) announced today that former faculty member Dr. Irwin M. Jacobs, CEO and Chairman of Qualcomm, Inc., and his wife Joan Jacobs, have made a $110 million gift to the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering. The couple's gift includes $10 million payable over the next five years to support students and faculty at the school, and a planned gift of $100 million, comprised of an irrevocable charitable remainder trust and a bequest intention that will build the school's endowment and create scholarships, fellowships and faculty support. This the largest gift in the history of UCSD, and one of the nation's largest individual gifts to an engineering school. [Read More...]

In the annual survey of graduate schools and programs released by U.S. News & World Report, the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering was ranked 11th in the nation (7th among public engineering schools), and CSE's computer engineering program ranked 17th. The rankings appear in the 2004 America's Best Graduate Schools guidebook and in the April 14 edition of the U.S. News & World Report weekly magazine. The survey results also appear on-line at www.usnews.com. Since 1990, the Jacobs School has moved up 27 slots, making it the fastest rising engineering school in the country. With $130 million in annual research expenditures, the Jacobs School also ranks 2nd in the nation for research expenditures per faculty member. [Read More...]

Michael Dell, founder and chief executive officer of Dell Computer Corp. and Bill Gates, founder and chief software architect for Microsoft both spoke with the UCSD community during the month of May 2003. "A Conversation with Michael Dell" took place on Tuesday, May 20th and "The Magic of Software in the Digital Decade: A Conversation with Bill Gates" took place on Tuesday, May 27th.

Michael Dell, founder and chief executive officer of Dell Computer Corp. and Bill Gates, founder and chief software architect for Microsoft both spoke with the UCSD community during the month of May 2003. "A Conversation with Michael Dell" took place on Tuesday, May 20th and "The Magic of Software in the Digital Decade: A Conversation with Bill Gates" took place on Tuesday, May 27th.

CSE Professor Bill Griswold helped Sixth College students get connected through the ActiveCampus program. PDAs were given to all Sixth College entering freshman as part of their technology and the arts curriculum. [Read More...]