News Archive

April 26, 2016 — A team of researchers including scientists from the American Museum of Natural History and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California San Diego found that catsharks are not only able to see the bright green biofluorescence they produce, but that they increase the contrast of their glowing pattern when deep underwater.

April 25, 2016 — University of California San Diego’s Luis Martin-Cabrera has been named a 2016 Whiting Public Engagement (WPE) Fellow by the Whiting Foundation for his proposal to investigate the lives of indigenous groups living in a region known as the “Saudi Arabia of Lithium.” A key component in rechargeable batteries for laptops and cell phones, lithium is actively mined in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. This activity is changing the landscape and the lives of people living in the region. As a fellow, Martin-Cabrera will receive $40,000 to fund six consecutive months of leave to work on his ambitious, public-facing project.

April 25, 2016 — Grant Jordan and Paul Wicks (M.S. ’14) are former students in the Master's program in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California San Diego. In 2015, they co-created a security-related company called SkySafe to protect organizations from illegal or dangerous incursions from commercial drones and their owners. Now, one of the top venture-capital firms in Silicon Valley, Andreessen Horowitz, has agreed to lead a $3 million investment in the fledgling company.

April 25, 2016 — An outline for a new tree of life, depicting the evolution of life on this planet that included more than 1,000 new types of bacteria and Archaea lurking in the Earth’s nooks and crannies, was made possible with the help of supercomputing resources and a phylogenetics “gateway” created at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), based at the University of California San Diego.

April 22, 2016 — The Sustainable Power and Energy Center (SPEC) at the University of California San Diego recently held a Research Summit for interested industry partners. Attendees from a variety of industry sectors gathered at UC San Diego to interact with faculty and graduate students, tour the UC San Diego microgrid and attend the Jacobs School’s Research Expo in the afternoon.

April 22, 2016 — Solar cells that are stretchable, flexible and wearable won the day and the best poster award from a pool of 215 at Research Expo 2016 April 14 at the University of California San Diego. The winning nanoengineering researchers aim to manufacture small, flexible devices that can power watches, LEDs and wearable sensors. The ultimate goal is to design and build much bigger flexible solar cells that could be used as power sources and shelter in natural disasters and other emergencies.

April 22, 2016 — Compared to the nicotine patch and a placebo, the smoking cessation aids varenicline (marketed as Chantix in the U.S.) and bupropion (Zyban) do not show a significant increase in neuropsychiatric adverse events, reports an international team of researchers in a study published online April 22 in the journal The Lancet.

April 22, 2016 — University of California San Diego Department of History Professor Mark G. Hanna recently earned the 2016 Frederick Jackson Turner Award, an annual prize from the Organization of American Historians (OAH) given for an author’s first scholarly book about a certain aspect of American history. Hanna earned the prestigious award for his book, “Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570 – 1740” (University of North Carolina Press), which demonstrates that pirates were essential to British colonialism, including patterns of development that shaped early America.

April 21, 2016 — As part of Earth Month at UC San Diego, the Sustainability Office will host the 2016 Sustainability Awards on April 26, 2016. Nine award recipients will be honored at this event for their dedication, advocacy and support for practices and procedures that have contributed to sustainability and renewable energy on the UC San Diego campus.

April 21, 2016 — The Preuss School UCSD—a charter middle and high school for low-income students who strive to become the first in their families to graduate from college—is ranked among the top 10 high schools in the State of California by U.S. News & World Report, which just released its annual list of “Best High Schools.”