UC applicants hit by false e-mails, Internet glitches
UC Davis has issued an apology to 6,000 admitted students who received an e-mail on March 22 indicating that they had received a Regents Scholarship, an award that offers students up to $7,500 a year toward their college costs.
An additional 800 students were correctly notified the same day about their selection for the scholarship. Additional e-mails were sent to notify these students that their notifications were correct.
This marked the first time that UC Davis issued the scholarship via e-mail, with the purpose of reducing printing costs and simplifying the process.
This error comes soon after another systemwide electronic glitch in the admissions processes. The University of California sent letters March 10 to March 13 notifying over 2,156 applicants that their Social Security numbers and other personal information may have been viewed online by other applicants. Financial information and actual admissions decisions were not among the information that could have been viewed. Information that may have been mistakenly viewed included name, address, date of birth, phone number, SAT scores and more.
The problem occurred on the UC Web site where students can update their application information. The university has issued statements saying that it is currently working with the external vendor that serves as a clearinghouse for application data systems for the university to ensure that this problem does not reoccur.
CMM West Building renamed for George Palade
Cellular and Molecular Medicine West Building has been renamed the George Palade Laboratories for Cellular and Molecular Medicine in honor of Nobel laureate George Palade.
A naming ceremony took place at UCSD School of Medicine on March 16, with Palade as guest of honor.
Palade, who was UCSD School of Medicine’s founding dean for scientific affairs, is widely considered a father of modern cell biology and internationally recognized for his pioneering use of a combination of electron microscopy and cell fractionation, or biochemistry, to describe the structure and function of cells.
He received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1974, among many other honors, including the National Medal of Science.
Palade was born in Romania, where he earned his medical degree and briefly practiced medicine before serving in the medical corps of the Romanian Army during World War II. He came to the United States in 1964 to study at New York University, soon moving to the Rockefeller Institute where he conducted groundbreaking work in tissue-preparation methods, advanced centrifuging techniques and cell fractionation, and studied electron microscopy, resulting in the discovery and description of several cellular structures.
He left the Rockefeller Institute in 1973 for Yale University, and later moved on to UCSD in 1990. He retired from UCSD in 2001, but continues to serve as an advisor at the School of Medicine.
Electrical engineers will conduct Defense research
UCSD electrical engineers will lead a six-university effort for the U.S. Army to enable troops to set up mobile communications networks on the battlefield. This ad-hoc network would be achieved by using lightweight wireless equipment during commando raids and other hostile and rapidly-changing scenarios.
The project will be funded by about $3 million from the Department of Defense over 3 years, with the option to extend funding to $5.25 million over five years.
This project is one of 31 recently approved by the Department of Defense’s Multidisciplinary Program, a $145 million, five-year effort targeting topics of “exceptional opportunity” for defense technologies.
Ad-hoc networks form to have communication so that peers find each other without a centralized network. To effectively deploy in fluid tactical situations, peers must be able to stay in touch while moving, maintain stealth, and avoid enemy jamming and eavesdropping on the network. The network will also have to sustain itself when peers go out of range or are damaged or destroyed. The technology may also prove useful for firefighters and police in emergency situations where pre-existing communications systems have been knocked out.
The funding will support the work of faculty and graduate students at UCSD, including those at the Center for Wireless Communications and at California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology.
