News Archive - All Stories

UC San Diego History Students Learn Secrets of 16th to 18th Century Islamic Manuscripts

The University of California San Diego’s Department of History is flush with scholars studying the fascinating histories of many parts of the world, from Africa and the Americas to the Middle East. Among them is assistant professor Nir Shafir, whose research explores what he calls “manuscript pamphlets” in the Ottoman Empire. These were cheap, short and handwritten treatises that transformed the religious and intellectual life of the Middle East over the 16th to 18th centuries.

UC President Briefed on UC San Diego, QI Commercialization and Startups

UC President Janet Napolitano visited the UC San Diego campus and the Qualcomm Institute on Friday, April 21, for briefings on local activities aimed at commercializing academic research and supporting student entrepreneurship.

UC San Diego and edX Offer Professional Virtual Reality Courses Online

UC San Diego virtual reality faculty experts are launching a three-course series on edX as one of the first Professional Certificate programs offered by the online learning platform.

UC San Diego Receives $7.5 Million to Develop Innovative Uses for Melanin

A team of scientists from UC San Diego and two other universities has received a five year, $7.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to unravel the fundamental properties of melanins, a family of natural pigments found in skin, hair, eyes and even the plumage of brightly colored birds.

Tickets for UC San Diego’s June 16 Dalai Lama Public Address Available May 1

The University of California San Diego will host His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama at a public event June 16, 2017 where he will speak about “Embracing the Beauty of Diversity in our World” to an estimated 25,000 attendees on the campus’s RIMAC Field. On May 1 at 10 a.m., general tickets will be released for the June 16 public address.

Engineers Investigate a Simple, No-Bake Recipe to Make Bricks from Martian Soil

Explorers planning to settle on Mars might be able to turn the planet’s red soil into bricks without needing to use an oven or additional ingredients. Instead, they would just need to apply pressure to compact the soil—the equivalent of a blow from a hammer. These are the findings of a study published in Nature Scientific Reports on April 27, 2017. The study was authored by a team of engineers at the University of California San Diego and funded by NASA.

Sustainably Feeding the Hungry

An estimated 70 billion pounds of food is wasted in the U.S. each year, yet recent statistics show that 42.2 million Americans live in food insecure households, including 13.1 million children. So how do we get nutritious food that would go into the trash to individuals and families who need it most? The answer is food sustainability, which was the center of one of the dynamic Earth Month events held on campus April 18.

Students Seek to Ban Plastic Water Bottles from Campus

Zero waste by 2020—that’s one of the goals of the UC Office of the President’s Sustainability Practices Policy for all UC campuses. Several students at UC San Diego’s Student Sustainability Collective (SSC) are working to make that a reality.

Beyond the March for Science

On April 22, tens of thousands of people around the world — scientists and non-scientists alike — marched through the streets of Washington, D.C., San Diego and more than 600 other cities to celebrate science and encourage environmental protection, science literacy, evidenced-based policies and strong federal research funding. Hundreds of UC San Diego community members took part around the world, some even “marching” underwater and on a research vessel off the coast of San Diego.

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