News Archive

January 21, 2025 — San Diego-based business leader and philanthropist Aiiso Yufeng Li (Jeff) and his wife DongDong Li (Doreen) have made a new $3M gift to the University of California San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. The gift celebrates the Jacobs School’s ongoing efforts to empower researchers to translate their innovations to the marketplace.

January 17, 2025 — President Joseph R. Biden announced this week the recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), including five faculty members from the University of California San Diego. The PECASE is the highest honor bestowed by the United States government to scientists and engineers in the early stages of their independent research careers.

January 17, 2025 — Researchers have developed a noninvasive method to monitor the electrical activity inside heart muscle cells from the outside, avoiding the need to physically penetrate the cells. The method relies on recording electrical signals from outside the cells and using AI to reconstruct the signals within the cells with impressive accuracy.

January 16, 2025 — A new tool could make it easier to study scarce and mysterious plant molecules. Researchers co-led by the University of California San Diego have developed so-called microbial cell factories—using E. coli and yeast—to produce a special class of plant hormones, known as strigolactones, at unprecedented levels. By amplifying production of strigolactones, which occur in such low amounts in plants, researchers now have the ability to study these elusive plant molecules in much greater depth than before. The work could help improve sustainable agricultural practices by offering deeper insights into how plants make and use their natural hormones to adapt and survive.

January 16, 2025 — Six faculty from the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering have been named 2025 Fellows of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world’s leading professional association for advancing technology for humanity.

January 16, 2025 — Larry Smarr, a pioneer in scientific computing, supercomputer applications, and Internet infrastructure from UC San Diego, has been named a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), one of the world’s most prestigious engineering organizations.

January 14, 2025 — New method takes blood pressure readings using only a smartphone.

January 14, 2025 — Scientists led by UC San Diego have developed a new strategy to enhance pharmaceutical production in Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells, which are commonly used to manufacture protein-based drugs for treating cancer, autoimmune diseases and much more. By knocking out a gene circuit responsible for producing lactic acid—a metabolite that makes the cells’ environment toxic—researchers eliminate a primary hurdle in developing cells that can produce higher amounts of pharmaceuticals like Herceptin and Rituximab, without compromising their growth or energy production.

January 8, 2025 — The way scientists think about fusion changed forever in 2022, when what some called the experiment of the century demonstrated for the first time that fusion can be a viable source of clean energy. But a whole host of engineering challenges must be addressed before fusion can be scaled up to become a safe, affordable source of virtually unlimited clean power. In other words, it’s engineering time.

January 6, 2025 — Ramesh Rao, director of the UC San Diego Qualcomm Institute, sits down with Shane Cybart, director of CalIT2 Riverside, for a wide-ranging discussion on quantum and other advanced computing methods.