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Family’s Gift to Support Junior Faculty in Physical Sciences Celebrates the Life of Yinan Wang

Yinan Wang was in his second year of postdoctoral research at the University of California San Diego when he and his wife, Rebecca, tragically died in a car accident while vising Sequoia National Park in August of 2017. To celebrate his life and scientific ambitions, his family has made a gift of $500,000 to the UC San Diego Division of Physical Sciences to create an endowed junior faculty fellowship that will benefit promising researchers in chemistry and biochemistry.

Recordings Spout Secrets behind Blue Whale Behavior

Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego are using underwater microphones to interpret and characterize the calls of blue whales swimming through Southern California’s oceans, revealing new insights into the behavior of these endangered marine mammals.

Ignite @ UC San Diego Extends Innovation Conference to Two Days in Year Two

On March 6-7, hundreds of investors, innovators, entrepreneurs, and activators will converge at UC San Diego for the second annual Ignite conference. Launched in 2017, the signature innovation event brings universities across Cali-Baja together with leading community partners to support life-changing entrepreneurship. Now the initiative is expanding to feature programming and competitions spanning across two days.

UC San Diego Innovator in Data Storage Technologies Elected to National Academy of Engineering

Back in 1956, IBM built the first disk drive. It was the size of two refrigerators and held a total of five megabytes—enough storage capacity to handle about 30 seconds of video. That’s a stark contrast to today’s hard drives, which can hold tens of terabytes of data and fit in the palm of your hand. One of the key innovators who helped drive this remarkable evolution is Eric Fullerton, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and nanoengineering at UC San Diego.

New ‘4-D Goggles’ Allow Wearers to be ‘Touched’ by Approaching Objects

A team of researchers at UC San Diego and San Diego State University has developed a pair of “4-D goggles” that allows wearers to be physically “touched” by a movie when they see a looming object on the screen, such as an approaching spacecraft.

Surprise Finding Points to DNA’s Role in Shaping Cells

Working at the intersection of biology and physics, scientists at UC San Diego have made a surprising discovery at the root of cell formation. They found that DNA executes an unexpected architectural role in shaping the cells of bacteria. Studying the bacterium Bacillus subtilis, the researchers used an array of experiments and technologies to reveal that DNA, beyond serving to encode genetic information, also “pumps up” bacterial cells.