Initially funded by donations from the city council to provide engineering education, over the past half century the multi-disciplinary UCSD has established a global reputation for teaching and research – Dipta Joshi One of ten campuses of the University of California’s public education system, over the past half century the University of California at San Diego (UCSD, estb.1960) has established a global reputation for teaching and research. In the World University Rankings league tables of Times Higher Education and QS, UCSD is ranked #33 and #54 respectively. Sited on the erstwhile Camp Mathew military training ground and contiguous to the country’s first marine research station — the Scripps Institution of Oceanography — UCSD was initially funded 60 years ago by donations from the city council to provide higher education to “students desirous of entering into the professional field of engineering”. Today, its Jacobs School of Engineering ranks #9 and its department of bioengineering ranks #4 in America’s Best Engineering Schools Rankings of US News and World Report. Currently, UCSD’s 12 academic schools and divisions offer 140 undergraduate, 35 postgraduate, 47 doctoral and five professional education programmes to 40,066 students from 100 countries worldwide, mentored by 2,959 faculty including 16 Nobel laureates. The university’s incumbent chancellor is Pradeep Khosla, an alum of IIT-Kharagpur. UCSD’s alumni roll call features D.J. Patil, the first data scientist of the White House; Nick Woodman, founder, CEO of GoPro and Kate Rubins, NASA astronaut and the first scientist to sequence DNA in space, among others. After remaining shut for over six months to check the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, the UCSD campus began in-person instruction for students last September. However, students are required to test for Covid contagion every week. San Diego. The second largest city of California state, San Diego (pop.1.3 million) is reputed for its mild year-round climate, natural deep-water harbour, scenic beaches and parks, and recent emergence as a healthcare and biotechnology industry hub. Popular city attractions include the San Diego Zoo, San Diego Safari Park, SeaWorld, and Legoland among others. A 20-minute drive from downtown San Diego is La Jolla county which hosts the main UCSD campus, surrounded by the Pacific Ocean on three sides and Mt. Soledad on the fourth. Outdoor activities include surfing, kayaking, snorkelling, and scuba-diving at La Jolla’s ten pristine beaches; hang-gliding and hiking through the Torrey Pines Nature Reserve; and visiting the Birch Aquarium. La Jolla’s idyllic Mediterranean climate ensures that temperates year-round are ambient. The average daily temperature is 21.4°C. Summers (June-August) are warm and winters (December-February) are slightly cooler. Campus facilities. The university’s 1,200-acre woody coastal campus is located in the scenic seaside town of La Jolla. The campus hosts 761 buildings, natural eucalyptus reserves, the Birch Aquarium, a museum, and the world’s largest outdoor ‘shake table’ that enables researchers to simulate and study earthquake vibrations. The San Diego freeway passes through the campus. The university’s bibliotheques include the Biomedical and Geisel libraries hosting over seven million digital and print volumes, journals, and multimedia…
