UCSB College of Engineering

UC Santa Barbara is thrilled to receive a $22M grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to build a first-of-its-kind user facility to unlock the promise of a new generation of synthetic biology.🔬

The U.S. National Science Foundation BioFoundry for Extreme & Exceptional Fungi, Archaea and Bacteria, a collaboration led by UCSB, together with UC Riverside and Cal Poly Pomona, will be able to study "weird" microbes, prototype new biotechnologies, and innovate for social impact.

Click the link for more information about the NSF Ex-FAB BioFoundry: https://buff.ly/4dJsPdC

Scores of undergraduate students from various STEM research programs showcased their summer work today during the 2024 Undergraduate Research Colloquium hosted by the Center for Science and Engineering Partnerships (UCSB)☀️

Most students received their first hands-on research experience this summer. The poster session offered them a valuable opportunity to develop important professional skills, including scientific communication in a conference-like environment.

UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Henry Yang announced to the campus community this morning that he will step down at the end of the 2024-2025 academic year.

He has served as chancellor since 1995 and plans to return to teaching, research, and serving as a distinguished professor of mechanical engineering. Click on the link to read his heartfelt message. https://buff.ly/46TLUaE

It’s time to Shell(phish)-a-brate! Congrats to Shellphish, a team comprising UC Santa Barbara faculty and students, as well as UCSB alumni who are now faculty members at other universities.

Shellphish was one of seven teams who qualified for the finals of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - DARPA AI Cyber Challenge (AIxCC). Finalists will receive an additional $2M to mature their AI-driven cybersecurity technology before next year’s finals.🏆

Learn more: https://buff.ly/3WHDUET
(Photo courtesy: on X)

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded more than $5M in support of collaborative research programs that involve UC Santa Barbara's Materials Research Laboratory and Quantum Foundry. The partnerships with Jackson State and New Mexico State, both minority-serving institutions, focus on increasing participation in materials science research, training, and careers.

Pictured is Jackson State student KC Sims (right) working alongside mentor Aria Ghasemizadeh, a UCSB PhD student, during her summer internship as part of the NSF-funded Partnership for Research and Education in Materials Science.

Read more: https://buff.ly/3YGCSM7

A novel technique developed by UC Santa Barbara professor Siddharth Dey and his research group has quickly been adopted by researchers across the country. They created a way to determine how faithfully DNA modifications are copied from one cell generation to the next, and it's scalable down to a single cell.🔬

“Showing the dynamics of individual cells provides great insight and allows us to better understand how biological systems work, which is a key step if we want to engineer these systems,” said Alex Chialastri, who completed his PhD in chemical engineering at UCSB in 2022 and spent nearly two years working on the project as a member of Dey’s research group.

Read more about their work here: https://buff.ly/4dfPCO9

Could a cart on tracks be used to speed drives across a data center?🚆

Moving data on light waves via lasers and fiber optic cables works fine for users running a Google search or editing a video but is far less effective for moving data sets of a much larger magnitude.

UC Santa Barbara computer science assistant professor Jonathan Balkind and his team argue for changing data-center architecture to enable “embodied data movement” — that is, using a small "cart" on a hyperloop to carry data-storage media across the data center.

Balkind and his co-first authors, Guillem López Paradís, of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, and UCSB undergraduate student Isaac Hair, presented this concept at the 2024 International Symposium on Computer Architecture, held this summer in Buenos Aires.

Learn more here: https://buff.ly/3WY2liU

An old algorithm gets new life as a tool for rapidly training deep-learning models for AI.

Recently Shaila Niazi, a third-year PhD student in the lab of computer engineering assistant professor Kerem Çamsarı, became the first to use what is known as probabilistic computing hardware to address a real-life problem, including generating an image that was not in the training data set.

The team relied on a "contrastive algorithm," which was rendered largely obsolete for most deep-learning applications by the NVIDIA GPU, but works very well with the machine built in Çamsarı's lab. “We're not following the current paradigm,” Çamsarı says.

Learn more: https://buff.ly/3WDgUHg

We are proud to share the great news that chemical engineering professor James Rawlings has received one of the most prestigious senior-faculty awards given by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. He has received the 2024 Warren K. Lewis Award for Chemical Engineering Education in richly deserved recognition of his remarkable contributions to scholarship in model predictive control, to education through his popular textbooks and sort courses, and to his academic leadership.🏅

In recognition for his pioneering invention that made white energy-efficient LED possible, Shuji Nakamura has been selected to join the Engineering and Science Hall of Fame.💡

The UCSB professor of electrical and computer engineering and of materials received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2014 for his invention. Previous ESHF inductees include Alexander Graham Bell, Nickola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Jonas Salk, and the Wright brothers.

Read more: https://buff.ly/46gJhPI

Thanks to the generous donations of his daughters, the faculty papers of Nobel Laureate and professor emeritus Herb Kroemer will forever be housed in the University Archives. The collection includes research and teaching papers, ephemera, and digital materials related to his transformative career. The University Archive also features unique materials of COE’s two other Nobel Laureates, Alan Heeger and Shuji Nakamura.

Professor James Speck is the fifth UCSB College of Engineering faculty member to receive a prestigious Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship. All five UCSB recipients are part of our world-renowned Materials Department. He joins Susanne Stemmer, Tresa Po***ck, Chris Van de Walle, and Chris Palmstrom as VBFF Fellows. In fact, UCSB ranks #2 among all public universities in VBFF recipients.🏅

Congratulations to materials professor James Speck! He is one of just 11 senior faculty to receive a 2024 Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship, the DoD’s largest and most prestigious single-investigator award for basic research. Each awardee receives up to $3 million to pursue groundbreaking blue-sky research. Speck’s research topic is “Beyond the Band Minima: High Energy Electron Dispersion, Physics, and Technology.”👏

Make your next beach read our latest issue of Convergence magazine!☀️ Our summer edition highlights UC Santa Barbara researchers aiming for the ultimate "power lift," batteries that can lead us to a carbon neutral future. Learn about the environmentally impactful 15 years of our Institute for Energy Efficiency (IEE), the addition of two faculty members in the Computer Science Department, and more.

🗞️: https://buff.ly/4bLOiAX

Our Undergraduate Commencement is just hours away. Here’s a link to today's livestream as we celebrate the accomplishments of our record-breaking Class of 2024! The livestream starts at 3:45 PM and the ceremony begins at 4 PM. Chemical EngineeringUCSB Computer Science Department UCSB Mechanical Engineering Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWG-CoWBW9I

COE graduating seniors have spoken – and here are the 2024 Outstanding Teaching Assistants in the undergraduate programs: Cassidy Tobin, Eric Hsieh, Junrui Liu, Kunjesh Agashiwala, and Anders Seawright. Read what this award means to the recipients
https://engineering.ucsb.edu/news/class-2024-selects-teaching-assistants-year
UCSB Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
UCSB Computer Science Department UCSB Chemical Engineering UCSB Mechanical Engineering

We are thrilled to announce the Class of 2024’s Outstanding Seniors. Each recipient has the highest cumulative GPA in his or her degree program. Five of these eight have perfect 4.0 GPAs and will lead the Class of 2024 into Saturday’s Undergraduate Commencement. UCSB Chemical Engineering UCSB Computer Science Department UCSB Electrical and Computer Engineering Department https://engineering.ucsb.edu/news/meet-coes-class-2024-outstanding-seniors

With our Undergraduate Commencement just days away, we're proud to announce this year’s Class of 2024 award winners, who are being recognized for undergraduate research, community service, and inspirational stories. Prepare to be amazed and inspired by these four individuals! https://engineering.ucsb.edu/news/awarding-excellence
UCSB Chemical Engineering UCSB Electrical and Computer Engineering Department UCSB Mechanical Engineering

Congrats to UCSB Electrical and Computer Engineering Department’s Haewon Jeong, who has received an National Science Foundation (NSF) Early CAREER Award to take a novel approach to eliminate bias and discrimination from machine-learning models. She’s the seventh COE faculty member to receive a CAREER award this academic year, which ties the college record for most in a single year. https://engineering.ucsb.edu/news/dirty-data-opportunity-cleaning-bias-ai

Satish Kumar is the first UCSB COE graduate student to receive a prestigious Schmidt Science Fellow. The ECE PhD student will study if plants can serve as bioindicators to detect and mitigate global pollution. https://engineering.ucsb.edu/news/historic-fellowship

Congratulations to assistant professor Matt Beane. He turned more than a decade of research into his first book, The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines, to explain how to protect skills in a world filled with intelligent technology, like robots. The book is available for pre-order until its June 11 release.
https://engineering.ucsb.edu/news/code-building-skills-our-modern-workplace

We are thrilled to share that Beth Pruitt, chair of UCSB Department of Bioengineering, and M.Scott Shell, vice chair of UCSB Chemical Engineering, have been elected Fellows of the AAAS - The American Association for the Advancement of Science,the world's largest general scientific society. https://engineering.ucsb.edu/news/two-ucsb-engineers-elected-aaas-fellows

COE supporters John and Cheryl Gerngross have generously created a $25K match for the College of Engineering during Give Day 2024. They’ll match any gift made to any COE department with a contribution to COE’s Faculty Recruitment and Retention Fun. Please join us in strengthening COE. https://giveday.ucsb.edu/ UCSB Mechanical Engineering Ece UCSB Department of Bioengineering

As part of UCSB Give Day 2024, alumna Pam Lopker has created a $50K match for the Department of Computer Science. For any gift made to she will match it 1:1 in support of faculty recruitment and retention funds. Let’s support our CS Department! https://giveday.ucsb.edu/

As part of UCSB Give Day 2024, you can join Duncan and Suzanne Mellichamp in strengthening the world-renowned Chemical Engineering Department’s graduate program. They created a $75K match, meaning they will match every gift made to the@ucsbche’s "Laying the Foundation for the Future Fund." Let’s show our support, today! https://giveday.ucsb.edu/

UCSB Give Day 2024 starts at midnight. It’s a chance for 36 hours to rally the COE community and support the next generation of STEM leaders and innovators. Let’s unite to ensure the college’s continued success and social impact. https://giveday.ucsb.edu/

Acceptance day has arrived! Congratulations to our future Gauchos! We hope to see you on campus soon!