Highlights of the 2012 Tech Forum

The 2012 UCLA Engineering Tech Forum, held recently at Covel Commons on the UCLA campus, hosted more than 300 enthusiastic attendees, including industry representatives faculty, students, and alumni. This year’s theme focused on entrepreneurship and start-ups in the tech industry, with faculty presenting groundbreaking new research in energy, health care, cyber security and wireless technologies that could lead to commercial applications.

Headlining the event were keynote speakers Henry Samueli, co-founder and chief technology officer of Broadcom Corporation and Fred H. Walti II – executive director of the new Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator.

Samueli, a triple alumnus of the school that bears his name, spoke on how research that began at UCLA propelled Broadcom into a driving force for the communication revolution. For the past two decades, Broadcom’s cutting-edge technologies played an integral role in the industry.

Walti highlighted Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator’s commitment to investing in a wide variety of clean tech start-ups by offering a suite of assistance programs. With hopes to grow the industry quickly, Los Angeles has set its sights on becoming another world hub for an up-and-coming industry.

The Tech Forum’s excellence in corporate philanthropy awards was also presented again this year. The school’s three most generous corporate supporters of teaching, research and service, Bruin Biometrics, Intel and Microsoft, were each recognized with the 2012 award.

The annual student poster competition is also a highly anticipated event, this year with 64 participants. Parag Gad, a biomedical engineering graduate student, took first place with his poster on an electrode to facilitate standing and stepping after a spinal cord injury.  Gad’s advisor is V. Reggie Edgerson, a distinguished professor of integrative biology and physiology.

Two honorable mentions were awarded to Anuradha Biswas, a chemical and biomolecular engineering graduate student, and Kari Varin, a chemical and biomolecular engineering graduate student . Biswas’ poster was on protein nanocapsules for delivery of a differentiation transcription factor, and her advisor is Professor Yi Tang. Varin’s poster was on nanostructuring for fouling-resistant membranes, and her advisor is Professor Yoram Cohen.

The student poster contest judges were: Dan Goebel, Ignacio Roman, Dean Sniegowski, Elizabeth Hagerman and Tom Monica, and chief judge Asad Madni.

The UCLA Engineering Tech Forum was made possible thanks to the support from Broadcom, Cisco, Lockheed Martin, Qualcomm, ViaSat, and Yahoo!.

To find out more about the 2012 Tech Forum, and to view more photos of the event, please visit the UCLA Engineering Facbook page.