Cell and Developmental Biology Professor Yunde Zhao knows firsthand how grueling the pathway to licensing intellectual property can be. He has gone through the standard licensing procedure in the past and discovered, like many other researchers, that the process to reaching an agreement with commercial partners is no easy feat.
Frances Contreras was a high achiever in high school and was thrilled when she received multiple acceptance letters from colleges. Yet her high school guidance counselor tried to warn her away from attending a four-year university. “I was told that with my background and upbringing, it might be better if I stayed local,” she recalled. ‘Maybe go to a two-year college first, so I wouldn’t be ‘overwhelmed.’ ”
UC San Diego students and researchers have produced the world’s first algae-based, renewable flip flops.The first prototypes of their new invention, developed over the summer in a York Hall chemistry laboratory, consist of a flexible, spongy slipper adorned with a Triton logo and a simple strap—fairly basic, as flip flops go.But when they go into full production later this academic year at what researchers hope will be a projected cost of $3 a pair, the impact of this campus innovation could be revolutionary, changing the world for the better environmentally.
Six years ago, visiting college senior Angelica Rodriguez spent the summer conducting oceanographic research at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. In the lab, she plowed through data and analyzed in situ observations to understand the oceanic mechanisms that transport heat onto the Antarctic continental shelf in the Southern Ocean. Though Rodriguez was new to the field of oceanography, she received training and mentorship from Scripps Professor Sarah Gille and researcher Matt Mazloff. After spending ten weeks as a researcher, she was hooked.
Walter Munk joined Scripps Institution of Oceanography as a young doctoral student in 1939 in what would start a nearly eight-decade-long career of scientific discovery, daring science and transforming how the world understands the ocean. The ocean science pioneer is being honored throughout 2017, including in a visit from His Serene Highness Prince Albert II of Monaco on Oct. 26.
As the University of California San Diego’s second college, John Muir College admitted its first students in 1967. 50 years later, the college is celebrating its golden anniversary with a year-long series of festive events. Muir’s current students and alumni are invited to the college for a kick-off festival for the reveal of the time capsule sealed and buried by the founding class from 5:30 to 7 p.m. on Oct. 2. Other events include a talk from one of the college’s founding faculty, Irwin Jacobs, a week of celebratory events for John Muir’s birthday, which coincides with the campus’s Earth Month activities, as well as an environmental conference featuring Muir biographer Donald Worster.
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