Inside San Diego’s Innovation Engine

The San Diego edition explored technologies converging to shape the next economy, including advanced computing and AI, fusion energy, biotechnology, health sensors, microelectronics, autonomous systems and space. Across those fields, the conversation returned repeatedly to the relationships and shared infrastructure that allow ideas, expertise and institutions to reinforce one another.

Deborah L. Wince-Smith, president and CEO of the Council on Competitiveness, described that regional ethos in a memorable way.

“That culture is embedded here, and it’s enabled San Diego to have a culture of building and not blocking,” she said.

Connecting the dots

San Diego’s collaborative culture has developed over decades, fueled by sustained investments in research, talent, entrepreneurship and cross-sector partnerships. UC San Diego has become one of its central engines.

Mark Cafferty, president and CEO of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation, traced much of the region’s modern growth to the campus’s founding 66 years ago.

“The heart of it,” he said, “is the research that happens upon this mesa.”

That research draws strength from UC San Diego’s depth across engineering, computing, biological sciences, medicine, ocean and climate science, public policy and other disciplines.

“The beauty of a place like UC San Diego is that we have a critical mass of expertise in nearly every area,” Khosla said. “We know how to identify it, nurture it and fuel it."

Turning that depth of expertise into impact requires an environment that is intentionally designed for collaboration and translation. At UC San Diego, Khosla has worked with leaders across campus to expand the infrastructure and partnerships that help discoveries move beyond individual laboratories and into real-world use, contributing to new technologies, companies and economic growth.

During the event, Wince-Smith presented Khosla, who serves on the Council on Competitiveness’ executive committee, with a national competitiveness award recognizing his contributions as a scientist, technologist, higher education leader and collaborator.

Khosla also emphasized the public obligation attached to taxpayer-funded research. Its impact can be seen in the lives improved, companies and jobs created and economic activity generated from university discoveries.

More than 1,000 startups have launched from UC San Diego since 1990, a figure highlighted by panel moderator Albert P. Pisano, dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering and special adviser to the Chancellor. Paul Roben, associate vice chancellor for innovation and technology commercialization, said the campus has helped create and define entire industries.

“We bring teams of people together to solve problems — from concept to innovative research, all the way through a pipeline that fuels economic development,”  Roben said.

That connective role extends across the full path from discovery to implementation. Alexander Khalessi, MD, chief innovation officer for UC San Diego Health and chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery in the School of Medicine, described a “convening infrastructure” that allows clinicians to work alongside engineers, neuroscientists, artists and other experts.

“With the concentration of talent at UC San Diego, solutions to human health challenges can emerge from anywhere,” he said.

Corinne Peek-Asa, vice chancellor for research and innovation, widened the circle further. Scientific advances also need policy and regulatory pathways, public trust, communication, economic expertise and engagement with the communities they are intended to serve, she explained.

Four rapid-fire presentations during an “Innovation Blitz” segment offered a closer look at how UC San Diego brings these elements together:

Bringing space discoveries down to Earth

At the Sanford Stem Cell Institute, Catriona Jamieson, MD, and her collaborators are using space as an accelerated environment for studying stem cell aging, cancer evolution and human resilience.

Experiments conducted in microgravity can reveal cellular changes far more quickly than researchers might observe them on Earth. The work connects regenerative medicine, genomics, computational biology, bioengineering, clinical research and spaceflight.

Jamieson’s team used that approach to study an experimental therapy designed to inhibit ADAR1, an enzyme linked to cancer progression. Researchers tested the drug on tumor organoids sent to the International Space Station before advancing it into a clinical study, with the first patient treated at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center.

“It was discovered here, developed here, implemented here,” Jamieson said. “We can do this more. It doesn’t have to be a one-off. We just have to do it together."

Building a digital twin of human performance

Health research has traditionally focused on disease and injury. Sam Ward, senior associate vice chancellor for research and innovation and vice dean of research in the School of Medicine, is approaching it from another direction: identifying the principles that govern optimal performance and applying them to improve health across a broad population.

Ward and his colleagues in the Human Performance Institute are combining sensors, imaging, biomechanics, molecular biology and computational modeling to create a “digital twin” that could predict how an individual body responds to physical stress, recovers and adapts.

UC San Diego offers a distinctive environment for the work. Engineering, health sciences and biological sciences are in close proximity, while UC San Diego’s Division I athletics program, professional sports teams, military partners and nationally ranked health enterprise offer opportunities to test and translate new approaches.

These daily interactions allow ideas to cross disciplinary boundaries and move from research into practice.

Finding the future of farming below ground

Food security may depend on organisms too small to see.

Sarah Allard, executive director of the Soil Health Center at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, is studying the complex communities of microbes that live around plant roots. Her team is developing locally sourced soil “probiotics” designed to improve root growth and crop yield, increase access to water and nutrients, and reduce reliance on fertilizers and other agricultural inputs.

The campuswide center draws expertise from microbial ecology, plant biology, engineering, hydrology, medicine, public health, economics and public policy. Farmers participate from the beginning, helping researchers develop solutions grounded in their experience and needs.

“The future of farming lives below ground,” Allard said.

Imagining the physical AI continuum

Artificial intelligence is creating computing demands that cannot be met simply by making individual chips smaller or faster, according to Bill Lin, professor and associate dean for research at the Jacobs School of Engineering.

Meeting that demand will require an integrated system spanning specialized microelectronics, sensors, robotics, wireless networks, edge computing and massive data centers. Lin calls this emerging system the “physical AI continuum.”

UC San Diego researchers work across the technologies needed to develop that continuum, while the region’s wireless legacy and industry base create opportunities to test and deploy it.

“The physical AI continuum will be imagined somewhere,” Lin said. “It can and should be imagined here in San Diego.”

Innovation in the public interest

The same connections that speed discovery can help address a harder question: Who will have the opportunity to participate in technological progress?

During a discussion about the future of AI, Khosla cautioned that the technology could expand people’s capabilities while deepening existing inequalities if access to computing infrastructure remains concentrated among wealthy companies, institutions and regions.

He called for broader access to the computing power needed to study and develop AI, framing the issue as both a public policy challenge and a test of higher education’s commitment to social mobility.

Rajesh Gupta, dean of the Halıcıoğlu School of Data Science and Computing, made a related case for universities as a shared “pre-competitive playground,” where researchers can explore new capabilities before discoveries move into commercial applications.

The discussion reflected the range of expertise needed to harness AI’s transformative potential while confronting the disruption it may bring. Maria Anguiano, chair of the University of California Board of Regents, called for greater investment in universities and basic research as the foundation of innovation. Liz Lyons, associate professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy, pointed to the UC's continued commitment to fostering human ingenuity, and the retention of ambitious and entrepreneurial immigrants as essential to U.S. leadership in AI. Lily Weng, assistant professor in the Halıcıoğlu School of Data Science and Computing, described the need to understand how AI systems make decisions, where they can fail and when their outputs can be used reliably.

Taken together, the exchange underscored a broader theme of the gathering: technological leadership requires expertise from engineering and computing, as well as health, economics, public policy, social science and the humanities.

By bringing these perspectives together with leaders from industry, government and national laboratories, the Council on Competitiveness and UC San Diego created a forum for examining the region’s strengths, confronting the barriers that remain and developing ideas that could travel beyond San Diego. The council plans to use lessons from San Diego and other regional conversations to inform a national strategy connecting research, commercialization, manufacturing, talent and jobs.

San Diego’s innovation ecosystem reflects the region’s particular history and strengths, yet its central principle has wider relevance: progress accelerates when institutions invest in talent and research, share their expertise and create pathways for people and ideas to connect.

Computer chips, soil microbes, space-based medicine and human performance represent only a fraction of the work underway across UC San Diego — and its potential to shape lives in the region and far beyond.

Read more news about: School of Medicine, Health Sciences, Halıcıoğlu School of Data Science and Computing, Sanford Stem Cell Institute