$7.5 Million in Federal Funds to Establish Mobility Center of Excellence at UCLA The five-year grant will support research on the impacts of new mobility technologies and highly automated vehicles on the evolving transportation system. Associate professor of civil and environmental engineering Jiaqi Ma will serve as the center’s director.
Time Picks UCLA Engineering Climate Solution as One of 2023 Top Inventions The Equatic technology, which leverages the sea’s natural ability to remove and store atmospheric carbon while producing hydrogen fuel, was created by a team of researchers led by professors Gaurav Sant, Dante Simonetti and David Jassby of the Institute for Carbon Management at UCLA.
CHIPS for America Taps UCLA Engineering Professor to Lead R&D Program Subramanian Iyer, a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering with extensive experience in microelectronics and semiconductor packaging, has been appointed director of the National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program at CHIPS for America’s Research and Development Office.
DOE Renews Funding for UCLA-Based Smart Manufacturing Institute The Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute at UCLA, spearheaded by UCLA Vice Provost Emeritus Jim Davis, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, will receive the five-year, $30 million grant to advance the adoption of smart manufacturing nationwide.
UCLA Engineering Part of $27M Defense Department-Funded Coalition Electrical and computer engineering professors M.C. Frank Chang, Chee Wei Wong and C.K. Ken Yang will be part of the California Defense Ready Electronics and Microdevices Superhub that will focus on transforming 5G and 6G technologies.
UCLA Researchers Develop Solid-State Thermal Transistor for Better Heat Management A team of UCLA researchers, led by mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Yongjie Hu, has unveiled a first-of-its-kind stable and fully solid-state thermal transistor that uses an electric field to control a semiconductor device’s heat movement.
UCLA Engineers Find AI-Based Solutions to Communicate Information around Opaque Walls Led by Aydogan Ozcan, the Volgenau Chair for Engineering Innovation and an electrical and computer engineering professor, the team developed a new process to combine an electronic encoder neural network and a material-based decoder to bypass obstructions.
Robot Origami: Robots that Fold & Bend This episode of the NSF Science Now highlighted research conducted at the Laboratory for Embedded Machines and Ubiquitous Robots at UCLA, led by electrical and computer engineering assistant professor Ankur Mehta. The team eliminated bulky chips to create fully foldable robots that can perform complex tasks without relying on semiconductors.
8 UCLA Engineers Among World’s Most Influential Researchers UCLA Samueli faculty Nasim Annabi, Jun Chen, Bruce Dunn, Yu Huang, Richard Kaner, Yuzhang Li, Aydogan Ozcan and Yang Yang have been named to Clarivate’s 2023 list of Highly Cited Researchers.
Engineering Student and Faculty Recognized for Innovation and Mentorship Soulaimane Bentaleb, who earned his bachelor’s this year in bioengineering with a minor in neuroscience, was awarded a 2023 Dean’s Prize for Excellence in Research. Bioengineering assistant professor Jun Chen and computer science professor Rafail Ostrovsky each received a Faculty Mentor Award.
UCLA Student Harold Li Won 2023 Google Ph.D. Fellowship Computer science doctoral student Harold Li received the fellowship for his work in natural language processing. Li is advised by UCLA associate professor of computer science Kai-Wei Chang.
UCLA SAMUELI IN THE NEWS
Fire that Indefinitely Closed Vital Los Angeles Freeway was Likely Arson, Governor Says Ertugrul Taciroglu, chair and professor of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, says high real estate prices may have created an incentive to make use of spaces under highways. The I-10 freeway fire in downtown Los Angeles has raised many questions about storage under the freeway. The story was also picked up by the Washington Post.
Packard Foundation Announces 20 New Fellows For 2023 Assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering Yuzhang Li is among the 20 early-career scientists and engineers who will each receive $875,000 over five years to pursue their research. Li’s research focuses on lithium and lithium metal batteries.
The Leonard Kleinrock Teaching Tree The internet pioneer and distinguished professor of computer science is featured in the fall issue of the magazine for his contribution to teaching over the years. Many of his former students have gone on to illustrious academic careers as highlighted in this piece.
LA County Supervisors to Vote on a Plan to Stop Beach Erosion Timu Gallien, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at UCLA whose expertise is in coastal engineering, says studies predict stronger storms in Los Angeles County will lead to more beach erosion, but solutions to strengthen the shoreline could be implemented.
Reckoning 375: How New Orleans Prioritized People Over Pavement In this special series podcast by Detroit’s National Public Radio station, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering Regan Patterson discusses why community engagement during highway removal projects is important, as often communities of color are left with negative impacts.
Thermal Transistors Handle Heat With No Moving Parts Yongjie Hu, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and lead author on a study published in the journal Science, shares in this piece that there has been a strong desire from engineers and scientists to control heat transfer the same way we have controlled electronics.
ChatGPT Has Entered the Classroom: How LLMs Could Transform Education Wei Wang, a professor of computer science at UCLA, and her colleagues experimented with different ways to query two of ChatGPT’s bots, GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, and found GPT-4 underperformed when answering college-level questions regarding physics, chemistry, computer science and mathematics.
STUDENTS
UCLA Computer Science Ph.D. Student Pan Lu Wins 2023 Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship A research abstract by Lu and a colleague was one of 18 projects selected from a pool of 182 entries. The award includes $100,000 to support Lu’s natural language processing research to make a trustworthy system focused on mathematics, science and education. Lu is advised by associate professor Kai-Wei Chang.