Engineering

Is the ocean making you sick?

This summer, surfers and swimmers will risk more than sunburn — the ocean could make them sick. UCI researchers are testing the waters and working to improve the detection, identification, measurement and elimination of coastal pollutants.

UCI professor William Cooper and his students count and catalog plastic trash

Fighting the ocean's plastic pollution

UC Irvine professor William Cooper follows the trail of plastic debris that’s spreading from the coast to the deep sea.

Jared DiBartolomeo

Reviving toe-tapping ragtime

Through his piano playing, engineering student Jared DiBartolomeo helps revive ragtime for a new generation.

Researcher collecting tide samples

Toxic tides

Sunny Jiang, a UC Irvine researcher studying pollution in Orange County’s coastal waters, recently got a graphic look at how swimming and surfing in the ocean can make people sick. She and a team of graduate students charted incidents of poor water quality at Southern California beaches over a 10-year period and the number of […]

Fountain pen next to writing

UCI poetry program going strong

For the talented few admitted, UCI’s graduate writing program in poetry offers a mix of creativity, criticism and, often, acclaim.

a Haitian boy receives treatment at a medical clinic at the United Nations Stabilization Mission's logistics base

Hope for Haiti's future

As Haiti begins rebuilding after a devastating earthquake, three UCI professors discuss how it could emerge a stronger country.

Students protesting state budget cuts to education march on UCI’s Ring Mall during March 4’s “Day of Action.”

Free speech explored on HIPerWall

HIPerWall makes its first foray into community education with “Our Students Speak” display on freedom of expression.

Jay Famiglietti

Documenting California's water woes

UCI hydrologist Jay Famiglietti calls much-needed attention to California’s dwindling groundwater supply.

The entertainer

Ragtime — that bright, toe-tapping piano music that flourished in bars, brothels and parlor rooms in the early 1900s — has found an unlikely promoter and practitioner at UC Irvine: a young civil engineering student named Jared DiBartolomeo. DiBartolomeo belongs to a generation that worships technology, was raised on rap and is addicted to keyboards […]

Port-au-Prince hours after earthquake.

From the ground up

It took scarcely 35 seconds Jan. 12 for a magnitude 7.0 earthquake to cripple Haiti, flattening its capital and killing more than 200,000 people, but it will take many years for the island nation to recover. While devastating quakes have since struck in Chile, Japan and elsewhere, Haiti’s situation is unique. Desperately poor before the […]