California Science News

A large collection of NASA climate and Earth science satellite data are being made available through the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud in a novel partnership designed to enhance research and educational opportunities nationwide. To date, several terabytes of data from three satellite and computer modeling datasets have been uploaded to the AWS platform: a […]

Four faculty members from California institutions have joined the ranks of Nobel Laureates in 2013, sharing prizes in Medicine and Chemistry. Randy W. Schekman (UC Berkeley) and Thomas Südhof (Stanford University) shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in Medicine with James E. Rothman of Yale University for their research on protein transport in cells, and how […]

The California Business Roundtable announced the launch of a new interactive online resource for accessing and filtering state-specific economic data. The California Center for Jobs and the Economy (www.centerforjobs.org) allows users to access employment data by region as well as by demographics and industry sectors. “The factual data that the Center distributes is going to […]

California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR) has turned to a trial partnership with NASA to assist in monitoring the vast stretches of levees protecting the Sacramento Delta. The project, “Monitoring Levees and Subsidence in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta”, demonstrated over a three-year period that an airborne radar system is capable of accurately detecting movement and […]

The California Senate and Assembly are honoring the National Academy of Science’s sesquicentennial anniversary with a resolution recognizing the service and contributions of the Academies. “The Legislature takes great pleasure in honoring the National Academy of Sciences for its 150 years of commitment to providing unbiased, peer-reviewed advice on science, technology, and medicine to our […]

On April 18, a virtual roundtable in the “Reinventors” series was held on how to tackle intractable problems in higher education. The roundtable was co-chaired by CCST Senior Fellow Mohammad H. Qayoumi, President of San Jose State University, and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Kim Polese, who collaborated on a 2012 white paper on reinventing public education. […]

Jon Kaye, who was recently recognized with a profile by The Oceanography Society, is not your typical oceanographer. He has left the traditional academic path for the world of philanthropy and public policy, helping the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation work to facilitate better science and technology related policy in California. “It boils down to a belief […]

Researchers in the UC San Diego division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) are using a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to build a high-performance digital network capable of carrying more than twenty times the bandwidth of the current research network. The project, Prism@UCSD, is the latest in a […]

San Jose State University has announced a partnership with an online education startup to offer low-cost online classes for credit. The experimental pilot project marks the first significant foray into online education for the California State University system, and could be the harbinger of a paradigm shift in higher education in California. “The state’s public […]

Four months after landing on the red planet, NASA’s largest-ever Mars rover, Curiosity, is fully functional and writing the latest chapter in a story of exploration that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has been building for decades. “JPL has a long tradition of exploring Mars,” said David Seidel, JPL Deputy Education Director and Manager, STEM […]

A new initiative at the University of California, Davis is promoting collaborative engagement between University researchers and policy-makers to help better inform energy and environmental policy. The Policy Institute for Energy, Environment, and the Economy was created earlier this year to bring to bear expertise at the University of California and other research institutions to […]

A successful culture of innovation depends as much on enabling entrepreneurship as on the ideas themselves, according to CCST Council Member Atul Butte, who spoke at the October Council meeting. Butte, MD, PhD, an associate professor and chief of systems medicine in the Department of Pediatrics at Stanford University, runs a laboratory which focuses on […]

This past Sunday, August 5, people around the world watched closely as the Mars Curiosity rover executed a complex and unprecedented landing procedure to arrive safely on the Martian surface, lowered on a ‘sky crane’ kept up by booster rockets. But no one was watching more intently than the more than 1400 scientists and engineers […]

Ensuring that California’s education institutions, research labs, and industries work collaboratively is important to translate the state’s research into products that generate jobs for Californians. A new program at in the Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz has offered its students just such an opportunity to work with companies such as Oracle, Texas […]

When major federal laboratories such as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories were established, they were designed to be the most advanced science and technology research centers in the world. Currently, while these centers remain among the foremost research institutions in existence, a great deal of cutting-edge research is also flourishing outside the […]

Harnessing the increasing capacity of advanced information and digital technologies to improve all levels of learning and education has become a goal for many in the education system at the local, state, and national level. However, finding the best ways for the education system to take advantage of rapid and significant advances in information technology […]

The increasing ability to track, store, and analyze biometric data has offered many possibilities for those interested in monitoring their own health. At the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), numerous projects are underway exploring the potentials that inexpensive, ubiquitous biosensors offer. For Calit2 UCSD Division Director Ramesh Rao, the exploration has been […]

California’s perennial shortage of qualified science teachers is nothing new. Addressing the shortage has long been a priority for the state, with both the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) spending considerable resources in recent years to improve the quality and quantity of credentialed science teachers. Despite these efforts, however, demand continues […]

The Federal Laboratory Consortium – Far West Region has awarded the 2011 Outstanding Partnership Award to a multi-institutional collaboration including NASA Ames Research Center, California State University-Fresno, California State University-Monterey Bay, and the University of California Davis, as well as the California Department of Water Resources. The project, “Water Management in California: A NASA-CDWR Partnership,” […]

Physicist and supercomputer expert Larry Smarr is known for big, forward-thinking ideas about the future needs of scientific research. The initiator of an unsolicited National Science Foundation proposal that led to the creation of five supercomputer centers and onetime director of the National Computational Science Alliance, Smarr has been directing the inter-institutional California Institute for […]

Mobile technologies are likely to have a profound impact on health care and biomedical research, according to Robert Kaplan, Director of the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) at the NIH and NIH Associate Director for Behavioral and Social Sciences Research. “This is an emerging trend that’s become apparent across many areas of […]