Alumni News

The Latest

Clean-tech Czar

As point person for San Diego’s Cleantech Initiative, UC San Diego alumnus Jacques Chirazi has steered city’s strides in sustainability

Campuswide Proof-of-Concept Awards Move Innovations to Market

UC San Diego announced its first eight proof-of-concept awards to advance university inventions to commercial impact. Funded through the new “Accelerating Innovations to Market (AIM)” program, these milestone-driven projects are designed to de-risk early-stage technologies.

After the Death of a Friend, Healing in a Social Network

Wounds heal – the cells in a body knit over a cut. When a neuron dies, the brain can rewire itself to make up for the loss. And now, new research suggests, something similar seems to happen within a human social network after the death of a friend. Published in Nature Human Behavior, the study of 15,000 anonymized networks on Facebook was led by social scientist, alumnus William Hobbs.

Economists Price BP Oil Spill Damage to Natural Resources at $17.2 Billion

The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was the largest maritime oil spill in U.S. history. Almost seven years to the day after the start of the environmental disaster, researchers have published a price tag of the damage done to natural resources: $17.2 billion.

Geeking Out in the Golden Years

Philip Guo caught the coding bug in high school, at a fairly typical age for a Millennial. Less typical is that the UC San Diego cognitive scientist is now eager to share his passion for programming with adults age 60 and up. His paper, the first known study of older adults learning to program, has been selected for honorable mention by a leading human-computer interaction conference called CHI.

UC San Diego Welcomes Author George R.R. Martin in Support of Clarion Workshop

George R. R. Martin, author of the series “A Song of Ice and Fire,” adapted on HBO as “Game of Thrones,” will visit the University of California San Diego May 1 and 2 to help raise funds for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. Martin is a former instructor for the oldest science fiction and fantasy writing program, which resides within the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination. Considered the most prominent fantasy writer since J.R.R. Tolkien, Martin will engage in conversation about the craft of writing science fiction and fantasy with Kim Stanley Robinson, an esteemed science fiction writer and a UC San Diego Department of Literature alumnus. Their public discussion takes place Tuesday, May 2, 7 p.m., in the Price Center West Ballroom. Tickets are already sold out.