Highlights of the 2012 Tech Forum

The 2012 UCLA Engineering Tech Forum, held recently at Covel Commons on the UCLA campus, hosted more than 300 enthusiastic attendees, including industry representatives faculty, students, and alumni. This year’s theme focused on entrepreneurship and start-ups in the tech industry, with faculty presenting groundbreaking new research in energy, health care, cyber security and wireless technologies that could lead to commercial applications.

Headlining the event were keynote speakers Henry Samueli,co-founder and chief technology officer of Broadcom Corporation and Fred H. Walti II – executive director of the new Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator.

Samueli, a triple alumnus of the school that bears his name, spoke on how research that began at UCLA propelled Broadcom into a driving force for the communication revolution. For the past two decades, Broadcom’s cutting-edge technologies played an integral role in the industry.

Walti highlighted Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator’s commitment to investing in a wide variety of clean tech start-ups by offering a suite of assistance programs. With hopes to grow the industry quickly, Los Angeles has set its sights on becoming another world hub for an up-and-coming industry.

The Tech Forum’s excellence in corporate philanthropy awards was also presented again this year. The school’s three most generous corporate supporters of teaching, research and service, Bruin Biometrics, Intel and Microsoft, were each recognized with the 2012 award.

The annual student poster competition is also a highly anticipated event, this year with 64 participants. Parag Gad, a biomedical engineering graduate student, took first place with his poster on an electrode to facilitate standing and stepping after a spinal cord injury.  Gad’s advisor is V. Reggie Edgerson, a distinguished professor of integrative biology and physiology.

Two honorable mentions were awarded to Anuradha Biswas, a chemical and biomolecular engineering graduate student, and Kari Varin, a chemical and biomolecular engineering graduate student . Biswas’ poster was on protein nanocapsules for delivery of a differentiation transcription factor, and her advisor is Professor Yi Tang. Varin’s poster was on nanostructuring for fouling-resistant membranes, and her advisor is Professor Yoram Cohen.

 The student poster contest judges were: Dan Goebel, Ignacio Roman, Dean Sniegowski, Elizabeth Hagerman and Tom Monica, and chief judge Asad Madni.

The UCLA Engineering Tech Forum was made possible thanks to the support from Broadcom, Cisco, Lockheed Martin, Qualcomm, ViaSat, and Yahoo!.

To find out more about the 2012 Tech Forum, and to view more photos of the event, please visit the UCLA Engineering Facbook page.

Mechanical and aerospace engineering associate professor Eric Chiou presents his research on a photothermal nanoblade.

This year’s Tech Forum keynote and faculty presenters with links to their presentations can be found below.
* Henry Samueli, co-founder and chief technology officer, Broadcom Corporation, on "Connecting everything®: A Professor's Dream Becomes Reality"
* Fred H. Walti II, executive director, Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator on "LA Cleantech Incubator at La Kretz Innovation Campus"
* Dejan Markovic, assistant professor of electrical engineering, on “Chip Design Redefined: Efficiency and Flexibility”
* Rafail Ostrovsky, professor of computer science and mathematics on “Novel Privacy-Enhancing Technologies”
* Yang Yang, professor of materials science and engineering and holder of the Carol and Lawrence E. Tannas Jr. Endowed Chair in Engineering on “Plastic solar cell: Breaking the 10% commercialization barrier”
* Yunfeng Lu, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering on “Development of Effective Therapeutic Protein Nanocapsules” (coming soon)
* Shaily Mahendra, assistant professor of civil and environemtal engineering “Bioremediation: Bacteria Clean the Environment by Eating Toxic Pollutants” (coming soon)
* Eric Chiou, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering on “Photothermal Nanoblade for Single Cell Surgery and Supersized Cargo Delivery”
* Jacob Schmidt, associate professor of bioengineering on “High throughput cell-free ion channel drug discovery”
* Serhan Isikman, a senior researcher in electrical engineering, presenting on behalf of his advisor, associate professor Aydogan Ozcan, on “Lensfree On-Chip Microscopy and Tomography Toward Telemedicine Applications” 
* Also, abstracts from all presenters at the student poster competition are available here