News Archive

November 2, 2015 — The NSF has announced funding for a ‘Big Data’ Innovation Hub for the Western United States intended to facilitate collaboration among the region’s technology sector and other organizations to address research challenges across areas such as precision medicine, natural resource utilization, hazard management, and metro regional development. The Western Hub is part of an NSF program announced today that includes four awards totaling more than $5 million to establish regional hubs for data science innovation.

October 30, 2015 — A new study has shown that changing ocean conditions have adversely impacted fish off California. The researchers compared data sets from the CalCOFI program and power plant cooling water intakes along the California coastline. The data show that fish abundance from both studies has declined sharply since 1970, with a 72 percent decline in overall larval fish abundance in the CalCOFI data set and a 78 percent decline in fishes from the PPI sampling.

October 29, 2015 — University of California climate and energy experts announced 10 scalable solutions for moving the world towards carbon neutrality, a practical framework that outlines both immediate and longer-term actions for staving off catastrophic climate change. The solutions were announced during the UC Summit on Carbon and Climate Neutrality that was held at UC San Diego Oct. 26-27.

October 21, 2015 — Donald Walter Wilkie, director of the Scripps Aquarium-Museum from 1965-1993 and founding director of the Stephen Birch Aquarium-Museum (now known as Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego), died on October 5, 2015, in San Diego. He was 84 years old.

October 20, 2015 — A UC San Diego study of the underground “architecture” of harvester ant nests has found that the more connected the chambers an ant colony builds near the surface entrance, the faster the ants are able to collect nearby sources of food. The reason is simple: Increased connectivity among chambers leads to more social interactions among the ants within the nest. So when one group of ants within a colony—comprised of individuals working toward a common goal—finds a particularly good source of food, it’s able to more quickly communicate that finding to the rest of the colony.

October 20, 2015 — Researchers in the UCSD Robotics lab have developed a duct-exploring robot based on the principles of tensegrity, a structural design paradigm which combines components under pure tension and pure compression to make mass efficient, accurately controllable structures. Ioana Patringenaru

October 15, 2015 — Steve Gallagher, a financial management and facilities operations executive with experience at several scientific organizations, has been selected to serve as assistant vice chancellor for finance and operations at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego. Gallagher’s career for the past 28 years has included a number of roles in management and program leadership, most recently at NOAA.

October 12, 2015 — California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Oct. 9 legislation that will improve the state’s ability to respond to major precipitation episodes and better manage water supply by expanding climate research on the causes of drought and flood led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego.

October 8, 2015 — Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, has named UC San Diego alumnus Harry Helling as its new executive director. Helling, who started his career more than 30 years ago as an associate curator at the T. Wayland Vaughan Aquarium on the Scripps Oceanography campus, is a passionate leader with extensive experience communicating and interpreting science for the public.

October 6, 2015 — The University of California, San Diego is named the 19th best university in the world in U.S. News and World Report’s second-annual global rankings, released today. The campus is one of only five public universities in the U.S. to make the top 20 in the list of the world’s top 750 colleges. The rankings measure factors such as research, global and regional reputation, international collaboration as well as number of highly-cited papers and doctorates awarded. The U.S. News Best Global Universities 2016 edition also features 22 subject rankings, in which UC San Diego received high marks for its academic areas, such as pharmacology and toxicology (4), neuroscience and behavior (6), biology and biochemistry (6), psychiatry and psychology (7), computer science (9), as well as molecular biology and genetics (10).