Spring 2018 Newsletter

IDEA Engineering Student Center Spring 2018 Newsletter

Photo by Erik Jepsen

I D E A

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I | Spring 2018 Newsletter

C o n t e n ts : 01

SHPE EMPOWER CONFERENCE

09

SPLASH

03

WIC GIRL'S DAY OUT

11

ENSPIRE

05

JUMP & TEAM

12

HACK XX

07

SHPE GRADUATE ROAD MAP

13

SPRING EVENTS

08

JACOBS CULTURAL EVENT

15

GRADUATION AWARDS

II | Spring 2018 Newsletter

Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers

Empower High Schoo

1 | Spring 2018 Newsletter

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Conference

By: Jocelyn Valencia EMPOWER, a high school conference with the purpose of promoting STEM to high school students was held at UCSD this spring quarter. During this conference 120 attending students were given the opportunity to learn about Professor Michael T. Tolley’s research, and hear from General Atomic representatives Josh Vasquez, Alberto Nunez, and Jose Ramirez. Additionally, the students were able to participate in three of the seven different engineering workshops. These workshops were designed and led by undergraduate engineering students to display the different fields of engineering and to develop the problem-solving and teamwork skills of the students.

EMPOWER was made possible with the support of: SHPE,Google, IBM,SPACES, TESC, as well as amazing student volunteers, different engineering organizations like SWE, ESW, EWH, SEDS, and Triton Racing, who showcased their projects during lunch.

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Women In Computing

Girls' Day Out

3 | Spring 2018 Newsletter

By: Priyal Suneja This quarter featured WIC UCSD’s annual outreach event, Girls Day Out, which was meant to familiarize high school students with the lives of Computer Science students. GDO 2018 included multiple events for its 50 participants. The day began with a talk by Dr. Mia Minnes Kemp, a professor at the CSE department, who talked about the different aspects and opportunities in Computer Science. After the talk, the participants were given an opportunity to talk to engineers from ServiceNow, who held a panel to answer questions regarding working in the industry as well as share their own stories about getting to where they are today. After a lunch that included informal mingling with the panelists, the day concluded with a programming workshop dealing with CSS and HTML during which the participants designed their own webpages. Thanks to all the involved faculty, ServiceNow panelists and the participants, WIC UCSD hosted another successful outreach event.

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Spring 2018 Newsletter | 6 4

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By: Ruben Rodriguez The Society of Hispanic Engineers host its first annual Graduate Road Map on May 5th. The one-day conference was organized by a committee of undergraduate and graduate UCSD students, with support from the IDEA Engineering Student Center. The mission of the Graduate Road Map was to expose undergraduates pursuing a bachelor’s degree in STEM to key requirements necessary for graduate school admission and success. Students learned tips about applying to graduate school, funding graduates, and finding the right program.

An additional focus was on promoting opportunities for students to enter industry after graduate school in areas such as research and development, product development, and other technical careers. Participants also heard from admission representatives about specific program requirements, which aimed to demystify the application process.

With over 70 students across multiple engineering disciplines in attendance, the first annual Graduate Road Map was a huge success. A special thanks goes out to all of the faculty and staff members who presented or volunteered to make this a great event.

7 | Spring 2018 Newsletter

Jacobs Cultural Event By: Ryan Fane Each year, Dr. Irwin and Joan Jacobs host the Jacobs School Scholars Cultural Event for all of the 40 Jacobs School Scholars. The Jacobs host the event to expose the Jacobs Scholars to different forms of performing art. Past events have featured orchestral performances, plays, and musicals.

This year’s event began with a dinner hosted by the Jacobs at James’ Place. Afterward, the Jacobs Scholars traveled to the San Diego Civic Theater for a performance of Pepperland, a dance piece inspired by the Beatles album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Mark Morris Dance Group’s performance featured choreographed dances to each song on the famous album, rearranged for the performance by Ethan Iverson.

As always, the Jacobs Scholars had a great time at this year’s event. They thank the Jacobs family for providing these opportunities to experience the performing arts and for hosting them during this fabulous evening.

Spring 2018 Newsletter | 8

SPLASH By: Ryan Fane On May 12, The Triton Engineering Student Council (TESC) hosted the third installment of the annual Splash outreach event. Founded in 2016, Splash gives area high school students the opportunity to experience life as a college student and take classes on a wide-range of topics. As with TESC’s other outreach efforts, Splash tries to encourage students to attend college, and to show how attending college is an achievable goal for everyone. As in past years, TESC collaborated heavily with the School of Medicine and UCSD graduate student Benjamin Cosman to produce the event.

During their day on campus, students take courses that are taught by UCSD’s undergraduate and graduate students. Instructors sign up to teach courses on any topic that they’re passionate about, with past courses covering topics like machine learning, economic inequality, and knitting. Students then pick from the list of these courses to create an individual course schedule. Typically, students enroll in two different courses, moving room-to-room like they would during a regular day as an undergraduate.

This year’s event was a great success, with over 200 students attending. TESC hopes to continue growing the event next year.

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2018 Splash Courses • Learn to Play Ukulele • Intro to Modular Origami • Introduction to Audio Signal Processing • Smartphones Replace the PC, Then What Will Replace Smartphones?

• Iron Man is Soft • Biotechnology: Intro and Applications • Introduction to Digital Logic • Introduction to Robot Localization and Mapping • Creativity - Rewiring Your Brain • Joy Practice • A Brief History of Medicine • The Plague: Some of history's worst pandemics • How to Win Big at Vegas - Game Theory • Pattern popularity • Analyzing Programs is Not Possible! (or is it?)

• The Pigeonhole Principle • Sending Secret Messages • Unrelated Math • Playing Pokémon with Probability/Statistics • The Mathematics of Credit Card Security • Voting Theory • Movement for Physics • Ask a Surgeon about Cancer • Quantum Tic Tac Toe • Videogames, A.I., Information, and the Human Machine • Ask a Surgeon about Appendicitis • Ask a Surgeon about Gallstone Disease • How Our Brain Gives Us Superpowers • DNA repair- What happens when DNA breaks?

• Women in Science and Engineering • Professional Development • Search and Rescue • Paying for College: Learn about financial aid and scholarships • How to Survive College 101 • How to Hack Studying • Puzzles!

• Coffee 101 • Teaching Confidence: From Interviews to Presentations • Applying to College: A Timeline and Tips

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Enspire By: Ryan Fane Each year, the Triton Engineering Student Council invites students from middle schools throughout San Diego to attend its ENSPIRE outreach event. TESC hosts ENSPIRE to provide middle school students from under-served communities an opportunity to learn more about the field of engineering and to inspire them to attend college to study engineering. For this year’s event, hosted on April 4th, TESC welcomed students from Taft Middle School, Mar Vista Academy, Hilltop Middle School, Southwest Middle School, and Rancho Del Ray Middle School.

Overall, TESC hosted over 400 students for this event. The day began with a welcome message from several of TESC’s board members. Afterward, students competed in a group engineering competition to collaboratively build the tallest structure possible out of unconventional building materials.

Next, Professor Veronica Eliasson from the Structural Engineering Department presented to the students during the event. TESC also hosted a student organization fair for the program. During the fair, attendees had the opportunity to talk to current engineering undergraduates and to see many of the projects that our undergraduate student organizations worked on during the spring.

As one of TESC’s signature outreach events, ENSPIRE continues to be a successful event. It serves to inspire the next generation of engineering leaders, and to introduce engineering to students that are often given few opportunities to learn about the subject in their schools. TESC looks forward to improving and growing this event even more next year.

11 | Spring 2018 Newsletter

Hack XX By: Ryan Fane

While hackathons have become national events in the last few years, only 20% of all hackathon participants are women. With Hack XX, TESC set out to address that inequality by creating UC San Diego’s first women-centric hackathon. This year’s edition of Hack XX was led by Hamna Khan, who graduated from the ECE department at the end of spring quarter.

Now in its second year, Hack XX 2018 brought over 100 women together for 24 hours of collaboration, engagement, and hacking. It provides a welcoming environment for UC San Diego’s engineers to envision, design, and prototype a new idea.

Hack XX began on Saturday, April 7th with a presentation by Jayashree Atre, a former director of product development at Intuit. Afterward, participants competed in groups of up to four students, with each group working collaboratively to build a working prototype of their idea. Alongside the teams’ projects, Hack XX also featured a workshop on interviewing hosted by Northrup Grumman, a workshop on machine learning hosted

by Cisco, and several other workshops on CAD, web development, and virtual reality applications as well.

At the conclusion of the event on Sunday April 8th, each team's hacks were judged two panels. A group of Northrup Grumman engineers awarded a prize for best communications project, and another panel awarded prizes for the best overall project. The overall winner of this year’s competition was Any-A, a Java application that helps elementary school students practice solving math problems while simultaneously being encouraged with messages from famous female mathematicians.

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Breakfast with the Deans The 2018 Breakfast with the Dean event offered newly admitted students the opportunity to learn more about UC San Diego and the Jacobs School of Engineering. This year’s event, held in Atkinson Hall, was near maximum capacity with over 200 admitted students and their families.

Participants heard words of wisdom from Dean Al Pisano, IDEA Center Faculty Director Olivia Graeve, oSTEM President Kayla Ortiz, and five student panelists; Maria Galvez (SWE), Erin Cole (WIC), Tee Srey (oSTEM), Kyle Skelil (NSBE), and Skye Edwards (SHPE). Kayla facilitated the student panel and explored various themes, including common challenges as well as a few benefits of attending the Jacobs School of Engineering.

Following the student panel, participants were treated to breakfast and the opportunity to network with faculty who shared their own insights about UC San Diego and their research. Many attendees also participated in the campus-wide Triton Day activities after the event.

Engineering Overnight Program Engineering Overnight Program 2018 was a huge success, with 124 admitted engineering majors participating this year.

This is an increase of 55% from 2017! This was made possible by a 44% increase in the number of current engineering students signing up as Hosts.

More than half of the students who participated in the Engineering Overnight Program will be joining us at the Jacobs School of Engineering in Fall quarter, with many of them participating in the upcoming Summer Engineering Institute program.

Every year, the IDEA Center partners with the National Society of Black Engineers, the Society of Women Engineers, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers , Women in Computing , and Out in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (oSTEM) in organizing this 3-day, 2-night event, which allows admitted students to tour labs, connect with faculty, network with student organizations, and experience the welcoming community that awaits them at JSOE.

13 | Spring 2018 Newsletter

Transfer Breakfast with the Deans The 2018 Transfer Breakfast with the Dean event offered newly admitted transfer students the opportunity to learn more the Jacobs School of Engineering. This year’s event, held in the Qualcomm Conference Center, was an intimate setting for transfer students to speak directly with faculty.

Participants heard from Dean Al Pisano and IDEA Center Faculty Director Olivia Graeve. The program was hosted by Erin Cole (WIC Professional Development Chair) who shared her personal journey from community college to UCSD. She also facilitated a student panel comprised of Ryan Arroyo (ResLife), Anne Cardenas (SWE), Tee Srey (oSTEM), and Mariam Ahmed (NSBE). The all transfer student panel discussed their transitions from community college and common challenges they each faced, along with tips to overcome those challenges.

Transfer Triton Day offered newly admitted transfer students the opportunity to explore UC San Diego, learn more about campus resources, and understand if UCSD is the right fit.

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Congratulations to LEAH GUENTER and CONNOR SMITH on their 2018 gradaution !

Connor, Student of the Year Award Leah, IDEA Award for Excellence in Diveristy and Inclusion 1. What extra-curricular activities have you been involved in (project teams, student orgs, etc)?

During my time at UCSD I was part of Society of Civil and Structural Engineering's Concrete Canoe team, as well as the structural lead for SWE's Team Tech. I was Treasurer of SWE my junior year and also led the sponsorship committee for Envision. Senior year I was president of SWE. I started at UCSD with the SPIS program, a summer program for incoming Computer Science students... Most importantly was my journey with the VR Club. I've dedicated most of my time at UCSD to the Virtual Reality Club at UCSD (now Triton XR). I joined the organization as an officer during it's founding quarter (Fall 2015), as the Project Manager, which had me in charge of everything project-related for the club, using skills I'd learned from the Hackathons I attended.

2. What are your future plans (long term, short term, or both)?

My future plans are to start working as an engineer at Clark Construction. I hope to stay involved in STEM outreach in San Diego.

I accepted an offer from Apple, and just moved to San Mateo with my girlfriend Kristin Agcaoili, with plans to start working on August 2nd.

3. What are some of your accomplishments (during your 4 years here) that you are most proud of?

I am very proud of how much SWE has grown over the past four years. I was very lucky to work with such an amazing group of women. I am especially proud if how PEI and Envision have gone these past two years. Both of these programs reach a wide audience and encourage diverse groups to excel in engineering.

My accomplishments with the VR Club/Triton XR are definitely my proudest and greatest achievements. Being able to grow the club to it's current size (one of the top 3 largest VR Clubs in the nation) and gain the recognition that we did was an incredible experience for me, and I learned so much about leadership and working with a large team.

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IDEA Engineering Student Center UC San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive #0429 La Jolla, CA 92093 Phone: (858) 534-6105 Email: idea@soe.ucsd.edu