One of the premier awards offered to incoming or continuing graduate students in the school. This award is funded by Henry Samueli, co-founder of Broadcom Corporation, after whom the school is named. The award is open to Ph.D. students showing exceptional promise of technical and scholarly work in civil and environmental engineering. The number of awards and amounts varies each year.
Eligibility Criteria:
For University of California, Irvine, materials scientist David Kisailus, the diabolical ironclad beetle isn’t just a curiosity—it’s inspiration. … Namely, natural selection has invented an ingenious structure that keeps the insect from flattening, a structure that Kisailus has begun to mine for inspiration to engineer new super-strong materials. “We're pretty stoked, because we think we can go to aircraft, automotive, sporting goods industries with this kind of design,” says Kisailus.
This page lists major international distinctions of our faculty. Additional achievements can be found in the individual links provided for each faculty listed.
Professor Derek Dunn-Rankin
Professor Said Elghobashi
David Kisailus is a professor of materials science and engineering at UC Irvine and a co-author of the study. He said: ‘This process achieves two goals at the same time. ‘On the one hand, it helps remove human urine from wastewater streams, mitigating environmental pollution and the buildup of unwanted nutrients. On the other hand, it produces a material that can be commercially marketed for use in a variety of settings.’ Read More
Jack Brouwer, professor of engineering at UCI, recommends: “Let’s start in the kitchen, where appliances suck up the most energy. The best time to run, say, a dishwasher is just before you leave for work or during the day ... That’s when fewer people use these appliances, so it’s helping the grid work more efficiently. And that’s a no-cost change in habit that benefits everyone.”
The scientists who made this discovery—a team from Purdue University and the University of California, Irvine—say the unique strategy employed by the diabolical ironclad beetle could inspire the creation of innovative materials, namely components capable of dissipating energy to prevent catastrophic breakage. David Kisailus, a professor of materials science and engineering at Purdue, led the new research. Read More
The marriage of engineering and information technology to biological sciences and medicine has enabled tremendous advances, helping improve the length and quality of human life. Artificial organs and limbs, sensors that monitor physiological functions, non-invasive imaging and miniature drug delivery systems are all examples of how engineers apply their tools and know-how to solve problems in medicine. The school’s faculty works closely with UCI School of Medicine researchers and the large number of biotech industry partners in the region to stay at the forefront of bioengineering.
But with snow from the last storm still piled high in the mountains, concerns are growing about the rain combining with snowmelt to generate flooding, especially in the mountain canyons with creeks that could overflow. "Those collector creeks that are capturing all that snowmelt and rainfall at the same time are going to be seeing some of the highest flows we've seen in some time," said [Professor] Brett Sanders, a climate engineering expert at University of California, Irvine.
What makes the diabolical ironclad beetle (the insect's actual common name) so indestructible? To find out, researchers at the University of California, Irvine and their colleagues repeatedly drove over them with their cars. Yes, the creepy crawlers survived the tire test and countless other more exacting compression tests in the laboratory. After years of research, materials scientist David Kisailus and grad student Jesus Rivera determined that it’s the combination of the material and structure of the beetle's exoskeleton which is different than other beetles.
For many years, [associate professor] Alon Gorodetsky, Ph.D., and his research group have been working on materials inspired by squid.
“The properties of [reflectins’] unusual amino acid content give them a high refractive index,” explained Alon Gorodetsky, a biomolecular engineer at University of California, Irvine, who develops materials inspired by the optical properties of reflectins. … The squids’ color-changing system also motivated Gorodetsky’s team to develop materials with adjustable infrared reflectivity. Gorodetsky noted that this material could coat objects and hide them from infrared cameras, with potential applications in the military.
The diabolical ironclad beetle can withstand enormous forces, protecting it from predators — and potentially providing scientists with new designs for materials. … Three different types of supports on the sides of the beetle, where the elytra and the shell on the insect's underside meet, allow the beetle to be compliant so it can squeeze into rocks without crushing its organs, says David Kisailus, a [UCI] materials scientist …. Read More
For many years, Alon Gorodetsky, Ph.D., and his research group have been working on materials inspired by squid. In past work, they developed "invisibility stickers," which consisted of bacterially produced squid reflectin proteins that were adhered onto sticky tape. "So then, we had this crazy idea to see whether we could capture some aspect of the ability of squid skin tissues to change transparency within human cell cultures," says Gorodetsky, who is the principal investigator on the project.
Researchers at the University of California, Irvine have successfully performed preclinical laboratory testing of a replacement heart valve intended for toddlers and young children with congenital cardiac defects, a key step toward obtaining approval for human use.
Scott Samuelsen, director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center at the University of California, Irvine, sees electricity produced from hydrogen as the inevitable choice of the shipping industry for three reasons ... “It will be an evolution and a changeover in the population of ships over many decades,” Samuelsen said.
Jack Brouwer, Professor of Engineering at UC Irvine is ecstatic to see the change. "It's exciting to have this happening in our backyard. It's exciting also to be one of the first in the world to actually adopt this platform," he says. Professor Brouwer says green hydrogen can be used to power not only buildings and cars, but also jets, ships, trains and long haul trucks and its emissions won't harm people or the environment. … “The only emission is water," he says. Read More
DWP is hardly the only Californian institution rushing to commit to hydrogen. SoCalGas, one of the state’s largest natural gas utilities, hopes to blend hydrogen into the gas network that supplies homes and businesses across Southern California.
