If you missed the poster session last week, or if you made it and want to know more, copies of the 2009 Calit2 Summer Scholars' Posters are now available on the Summer Scholars website.

Poster session winner for best poster, Robert Turner, is in photo here. Turner is just beginning his sophomore year as a computer science and engineering (CSE) major this month. He worked with faculty advisor Beth Simon of CSE on his project entitled, "Integrating the Ubiquitous Presenter to receive information from the web, iPhones and iClickers."

The posters are the culmination of 10-weeks of intensive research by 24 undergraduates majoring in 15 different fields who worked with faculty advisors from across ...

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CRCA researchers Micha Cardenas and Elle Mehrmand will be doing a performance entitled Technesexual that uses DIY biometric sensors that were made by hand to create live audio which will be heard in real space and virtual space at the same time. It is a Mixed Reality performance exploring relationality between people and between people and technology.

Cardenas and Mehrmand will be performing Technesexual in Tijuana at Entijuanarte on Oct 4th, in San Francisco at Arse Elektronika on Oct 2nd and in Montreal at Artivistic. They will also be doing a 3 day workshop in Montreal from Oct 15-17th, sharing the technology used for the performance with workshop participants including DIY electronics, ...

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On Tuesday evening, Calit2 Director Larry Smarr was the keynote speaker at the 2009 Convocation, which welcomed thousands of transfer students and freshmen to the UC San Diego campus. In his talk, Smarr went out of his way to challenge the students to work on solving the big challenges facing humanity, including global climate change. Here's the full text of his speech:

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Please join us in celebrating the hard work of the 2009 Calit2 Undergraduate Summer Scholars. Their end-of-summer Poster Session will be held next Tuesday.

This event is the culmination of 10-weeks of intensive research by 24 undergraduates majoring in 15 different fields who worked with faculty advisors from across campus as full-time researchers this summer. This is the ninth year of the highly successful program; more than 225 UC San Diego undergraduates have been Calit2 summer scholars.

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UC San Diego political science Professor James Fowler, an affiliate of Calit2, will make an appearance at Warwick's Bookstore, 7812 Girard Avenue in La Jolla at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 8 to discuss and sign his new book, "Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives."

Fowler's research (conducted with colleague Nicholas Christakis of the Harvard School of Public Health) has repeatedly made front-page news nationwide. The authors' new book explains why emotions are contagious, how health behaviors spread, why the rich get richer and even how we find and choose our partners.

Read more about Fowler's research. 

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A performance art developed by Elle Mehrmand and Micha Cardenas, "Mixed Realtions" looks at the connection between bodies and technology within a virtual and physical existence, and explores the virtual world's ever increasing influence, socially and physically, in society.

Elle Mehrmand and Micha Cardenas performing in actual space and artificial space using Second Life.

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b.a.n.g. lab researcher Micha Cardenas will be presenting at the Mobile HCI conference in Bonn, Germany tomorrow morning at the Community Practices and Locative Media Workshop. She will be presenting a paper on the Transborder Immigrant Tool. The pdf of that paper is here and it was co-written by Cardenas, Ricardo Dominguez, Amy Sara Carroll and Brett Stalbaum of the Electronic Disturbance Theater.

Here's the summary:

The Transborder Immigrant Tool: Violence, Solidarity and Hope in Post-NAFTA Circuits of Bodies Electr(on)/ic

Micha Cardenas, Amy Sara Carroll, Ricardo Dominguez, Brett Stalbaum
EDT, Calit2, B.A.N.G. Lab, UCSD/Michigan

This polyvocal, collectively authored paper describes ...

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A number of classrooms at UC San Diego have received a new addition -- just in time for the 2009-2010 academic year.

LED digital signs have been installed in five classrooms in UCSD's Center Hall, with 13 more expected to be installed throughout campus in the coming months. Initially, the signs will display the time and, at the top of the hour, information about the course itself, including the professor's name and the course title. ("That gets asked about a million times a day on the first day of class," says the project's lead, Calit2 Principal Development Engineer Doug Palmer.)

But eventually, the signs will be used to alert students during emergency situations, such as during a fire or in ...

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The San Diego Union-Tribune's technology writer Mike Lee picked up on the joint Calit2-Scripps Institution of Oceanography release about overcoming the final obstacle to start receiving roughly $32 million in stimulus funding for the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) Cyberinfrastructure project. The funding comes from NSF, via the semi-governmental Consortium for Ocean Leadership, and had been initially announced in 2007, before an overhaul of Ocean Leadership's predecessor organization -- and budget problems -- put the award on hold. The funding will allow the OOI Cyberinfrastructure project to staff up, primarily at Calit2 where the project is based, under the leadership ...

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