UCSD undergrad and Calit2 staff photographer Erik Jepsen won first place in the sports photo category in the Associated Collegiate Press' annual Photo Excellence Awards.

Jepsen took his aerial shot of a UCSD volleyball player (shown at left) for the UCSD Guardian while perched in the rafters of RIMAC arena (although he likes to tell people that he set the camera's self-timer and tossed it above the player just before his overhand serve). Click here to see the other winning entries.

Jepsen's photograph of Calit2 researcher Albert Yu-Min Lin was also recently featured on National Geographic's Web site. NatGeo ran Jepsen's pic of Lin standing in front of the institute's HIPerSpace Wall with its story about Lin's search to find the lost tomb of Genghis Khan (click here to see the image).