News Archive

June 25, 2015 — Electrical engineers have broken key barriers that limit the distance information can travel in fiber optic cables and still be accurately deciphered by a receiver. Photonics researchers at the University of California, San Diego have increased the maximum power — and therefore distance — at which optical signals can be sent through optical fibers. This advance has the potential to increase the data transmission rates for the fiber optic cables that serve as the backbone of the internet, cable, wireless and landline networks. The research is published in the June 26 issue of the journal Science.

June 25, 2015 — UC San Diego’s Office of Research Affairs has launched an aggressive push to boost innovation across all areas of campus and to speed university discoveries and technology to the nation’s marketplaces.

June 25, 2015 — The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a $5 million grant to support the Simons Array, a new system of three powerful telescopes designed to study the origins of the universe. Led by a team of scientists from UC San Diego, UC Berkeley and the University of Colorado, the Simons Array expands the POLARBEAR project, based in Chile’s Atacama desert, to search for the signature of cosmic inflation—the rapid expansion of the early universe after the Big Bang. The project is one of just four cosmology proposals—out of more than 40 applicants in 2014—to be funded by the NSF.

June 24, 2015 — Leading computational biologist Jill P. Mesirov, PhD, has been appointed associate vice chancellor for computational health sciences and professor of medicine at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center. Mesirov most recently served as associate director and chief informatics officer at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where she directed the Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Program.

June 23, 2015 — Physicists have found a way to control the length and strength of waves of atomic motion that have promising potential uses such as fine-scale imaging and the transmission of information within tight spaces.

June 23, 2015 — When The Preuss School UCSD Class of 2015 graduates this week, senior Diego Espinoza will have a lot to celebrate. Not only is Espinoza the class valedictorian, he is also going to Tufts University on a full-ride scholarship. His classmate and salutatorian Belen Hernandez will be celebrating as well—she is one of 21 Preuss students who will attend UC San Diego on a full ride through the Chancellor’s Associates Scholars Program.

June 22, 2015 — UC San Diego’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry ranked second in the nation in a new survey of professorships held by underrepresented minorities, reflecting the progress we’ve made in building a diverse faculty.

June 22, 2015 — Chemists and biologists at UC San Diego have succeeded in designing and synthesizing an artificial cell membrane capable of sustaining continual growth, just like a living cell.

June 22, 2015 — Physicists at UC San Diego have developed a new way to control the transport of electrical currents through high-temperature superconductors—materials discovered nearly 30 years ago that lose all resistance to electricity at commercially attainable low temperatures.

June 19, 2015 — Psychiatric disorders can be difficult to diagnose because clinicians must rely upon interpreted clues, such as a patient’s behaviors and feelings. For the first time, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report identifying a biological marker: the over-production of specific genes that could be a diagnostic indicator of mental illness in female psychiatric patients.