Napoleone Ferrara, MD, PhD, the molecular biologist credited with helping decipher how tumors grow and now senior deputy director for basic sciences at the University of California, San Diego Moores Cancer Center, was today named one of 11 recipients of the inaugural Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, which comes with a $3 million cash award.
In a pair of new papers, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences upend a long-held view about the basic functioning of a key receptor molecule involved in signaling between neurons, and describe how a compound linked to Alzheimer’s disease impacts that receptor and weakens synaptic connections between brain cells.
In a sweeping review of the field of bio-inspired engineering and biomimicry in the Feb. 15 issue of the journal Science, two engineers at the University of California, San Diego, identify three characteristics of biological materials that they believe engineers would do well to emulate in man-made materials: light weight, toughness and strength.
A team of engineering students at UC San Diego has been working hard to help protect the beaches and waters off the La Jolla coastline by developing a web app that will allow volunteers to monitor the health of marine conservation areas. Volunteers will input information about human activity, pollution, and even poaching, into the app via an interactive form.
Almost 160 active companies in San Diego County have been established by UC San Diego alumni, faculty and staff. With the launch of a second "Express License" program, founding a company with engineering or physical sciences technology invented at the university just got easier.
Nearly 300 University of California, San Diego undergraduates have participated in full-time research opportunities with the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) since 2001 — and it is now recruiting to fill as many as 30 more positions for this summer.
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