News Archive

April 23, 2018 — The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the country’s most esteemed honorary societies and independent policy research centers, has elected three professors of the University of California San Diego as new members.

April 5, 2018 — In 1895 Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite sat at a desk in Paris and secretly wrote out his last will and testament. In that document, the man known to many as “the Merchant of Death” stipulated that his vast wealth be distributed in the form of yearly prizes to those who “have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind.” In the following years, the Nobel Prize would become the world’s most prestigious honor. Each December, thousands of the world’s elites arrive in Stockholm to dine on reindeer with the King of Sweden in celebration of the achievements of humankind.

March 23, 2018 — University of California San Diego condensed matter physicists noticed something surprising about electrons—they behave like a family. Electrons not only carry electric charge as exhibited in electric currents, but they also possess spins which are responsible for quantum magnetic properties. Electron spins can organize, bond and interact. When excited, one spiraling part impacts the others.

March 19, 2018 — Each year people all over the world die from the flu. To protect against influenza epidemics and their potentially mortal results, medical professionals encourage vaccination. While generally effective for healthy individuals, vaccinations are less effective for the elderly, the immunocompromised and other high-risk groups. For the healthy, getting a shot doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t get the flu since current vaccinations are not full-proof. But now there’s hope.

February 15, 2018 — Four early-career scientists at UC San Diego have been recognized for their outstanding promise in the fields of physics and computational & evolutionary molecular biology as 2018 Sloan Research Fellows.

February 13, 2018 — Armed with skill, special tools and light, University of California San Diego Associate Professor Neal Devaraj and a group of his chemistry graduate students activated cellular gene expression with unique precision. By modifying messenger RNA (mRNA)—a group of molecules that carries genetic information from DNA to ribosomes where specifications of gene expression occur—the chemists were able to precisely trigger gene expressions at a specific time and place using laser light. This novel technique will ease future studies of individual protein functions in cells or tissues at different stages of biological development.

February 12, 2018 — 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.

January 9, 2018 — University of California San Diego scientists used ultrafast lasers and supercomputers to develop a new method to probe electron charge transfer at the interface between organic semiconductors and metal surfaces. The UC San Diego research by Department of Chemistry faculty Wei Xiong and Francesco Paesani, plus two graduate students and a postdoctoral fellow, marks the first time that this novel direct charge transfer mechanism was measured in energy systems such as solar cells and photovoltaics—materials that involve the conversion of light into electricity.

December 14, 2017 — For the first time, a delegation of faculty and students from the University of California San Diego attended the annual Out in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (oSTEM) National Conference to promote greater involvement of LGBT+ community in STEM fields.

December 11, 2017 — Researchers have identified a promising new strategy to fight infections and cancer. They uncovered a novel function for a protein known as “Runx3” that is key to the development of killer T cells—immune cells important for fighting infections and cancer. The researchers believe Runx3, if properly directed, could be combined with other approaches to help T cells recognize and destroy tumor cells and enhance vaccine efficacy.