UCSD recently announced the awardees for its first offering of the Frontiers of Innovation Scholars Program. The program aims to enhance interdisciplinary research across four strategic research themes – 1) Understanding and Protecting the Planet, 2) Enriching Human Life and Society, 3) Exploring the Basis of Human Knowledge, Learning, and Creativity, and 4) Understanding Cultures and Addressing Disparities in Society. PhD students Quentin Gautier and Alexandria Shearer, and undergraduates Jorge Pacheco, Nathan Hui, Antonella Wilby and Dominique Meyer all received awards. Quentin will work on 3D modeling for underwater archaeology (the picture above shows an underwater cannon in Rockly Bay, Tobago – the site of a large conflict between the French and the Dutch to control Tobago. We created this model using data from collaborating archaeologists); Alex project aims to develop an aerial lidar system for topographic mapping large forested regions specifically to find Maya structures in the jungle; and the undergraduates will work on various projects related to the Engineers for Exploration program.

Links:
UCSD Press Release
UCSD CSE Press Release
Frontiers of Innovation Scholars Program

Congratulations to Dr. Janarbek Matai on the successful defense of his PhD thesis. His thesis focused on making the hardware design process easier to use, more accessible to programmers, while not sacrificing performance. As one of the foremost experts in high level synthesis, he aimed to automate the knowledge that he has learned by using these state of the art hardware design tools over the past five years. Janarbek will be missed, but is not going far. He will join the research group at Cognex along with former Kastner Group alumni Dr. Ali Irturk and MS alumni Isaac Phillips.

Our group has seven posters in the Jacobs School of Engineering Research Expo this year. The posters cover our research in underwater sensing, hardware acceleration for biomedical applications, real-time 3D reconstruction, and archaeological mapping. The research expo has been a great way for our group to connect with industry. Nik Devreaux from ViaSat provides some insight on this in a recent interview where he mentions his past experiences with our research group related to FPGAS and cyber-security, and the connections with ViaSat.

Links: Jacobs School of Engineering Research Expo, Research Expo Poster Abstracts,
Nik Devereau Interview