Shanghai Jiao Tong University recently ranked UCSD the ninth best university in the world for engineering/technology and computer sciences. By any measure, the Jacobs School of Engineering is delivering on its promise to educate tomorrow’s technology leaders, conduct leading-edge research, and transfer valuable discoveries to commercial ventures that help the San Diego region prosper.
The Jacobs School continually fine-tunes its academic curriculum with the guidance of area industry leaders. It recently established a new Department of NanoEngineering, one of the first such departments in the nation, as part of its emphasis on exciting new areas of study at the interfaces of traditional academic disciplines of science and engineering. Nanoscience and nanotechnology have the potential to make valuable contributions to biology and medicine.
The school’s William J. von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism and Technology Advancement is working to accelerate the transfer of commercially important discoveries to companies in the San Diego region. The first campus commercialization enterprise of its kind in the country, the von Liebig Center has provided more than $2.8 million in seed funding to a total of sixty-five Jacobs School projects, fifteen of which have been converted into startup companies that have gone on to raise more than $50 million in additional investment capital.
The Jacobs School, with the largest enrollment of any engineering school in the University of California system, has 175 exceptional faculty members, including 18 in the National Academy of Engineering. The school ranks third in the nation for research expenditures per faculty member, according to a U.S. News and World Report ranking published in 2007.