Rady Takes Innovative Step with Trumba

In coordination with Rady Development and IT, the Alumni Board has selected Trumba to provide calendar software to alumni and our related audience.  While this will not replace the current Microsoft Exchange platform used within MBA programs, it will provide a state-of-the-art, brand agnostic sytem for Rady.  This means full interoperability with calendar systems from Google, Yahoo and others. 

Trumba uses embeddable widgets to extend calendars onto any web page, a feature that will be used heavily in upgrades to the alumni website.  The company was founded by the creators of Visio and PageMaker with venture backing from the likes of Kleiner Perkins and others.  Rollout is expected to begin shortly after the agreement is finalized this week. 

Otterson Captured in Google Street View

Here’s a treat for the inner internet lover in each of you. Google Maps recently launched Street View in San Diego, providing 3-dimensional street-level photography from many of the city’s major roads.

This takes maps to a whole new dimension. Cruise down Torrey Pines Road, for example, and you get the following view of Otterson Hall.

Jim Trauth ’07 contributed to this post.

Otterson Reaches for the Sun

The solar power array on Otterson Hall is finally nearing reality.  Central campus has confirmed that installation will take place between August 13th and September 7th, with a system commissioning and turnover to follow thereafter.

Details regarding the position and function of a system generation monitor — a sign describing the power generation and performance — are still being finalized among Rady, UCSD and Kyocera.

Before You Cut and Run…

ALUMNI: don’t forget to establish email forwarding and complete the Career Connections CSC Survey online. Both are critical pieces to your ongoing involvement in the Rady community and will take you, altogether, less than 10 minutes to complete.

Email forwarding is set via the alumni website by clicking the Email for Life link and entering a personal email address. The CSC survey is located right here in Community. It is a vital part of Rady’s future as a ranked and distinguished program — please keep your responses updated.

New Faculty Web Pages Launched

Rady Marketing and Communication has launched new faculty web pages to improve information access and electronic linkages to our faculty. From the faculty directory, visitors can also read about new incoming professors, although the information is a bit sparse as of now and lacking photographs.

Thanks to Scott Parish for giving Rady a consistently fresh presence online.

Quarterly Newsletter is Upgraded

Rady Marketing & Communication has updated the format of its quarterly newsletter to a web-based HTML layout. Conceived and created by Scott Parish, the new format is an exciting upgrade for news in the Rady community. It will also enable more detailed tracking of newsletter contents. This quarter, for example, the most popular story in the newsletter is about the Otterson Hall dedication.

Personal Lit Finds Lift

Two new sources of wit and wisdom have emerged in the Rady community that are worth your consideration.

The Adventures of Elaine Kub is a personal blog from none other than Elaine Kub in the graduating 2007 class. Launched in September of 2006 on Vox, the blog contains dispatches from Elaine’s curious life in San Diego and more recently, Omaha, Nebraska.

For personal musings on visionaries, dreamers, and the thin line between them, Jim Trauth ’07 recently launched Thought Laggard. The blog has been live for just over a month on TypePad.

If you’re a Rady community member with a blog you’d like to share, please post a comment here with your URL and it will be added to our links on the right.

Alumni Board Meeting Tonight

The Rady Alumni Board will meet tonight at 6:00 pm in room 3S111 of Otterson Hall (the IT Conference room). This is the Board’s first meeting in Otterson as well as the first to include the Full-Time class of 2007 as alumni. This month’s technology update is included below.

von Liebig Center awards $50K to Team led by Rady Student

The von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism and Technology Advancement at the Jacobs School of Engineering has awarded $50,000 to a team led by Rady student Aron Tremble ’07. Code-named IGMA, the technology is being developed within Computer Science and Engineering at JSOE and enables semantic search and discovery of music. The IGMA team will use the grant to develop scalable commercial prototypes.

von Liebig Center grants are awarded semi-annually on a competitive basis to outstanding technologies with strong commercial potential. Selection involves a rigorous vetting process by domain experts and leaders in the entrepreneurial community. Congratulations to Aron and the IGMA team!

Nick Boyle ’07 and Craig Braun ’07 contributed this post.

Founders Tribute Book

At Dean Sullivan’s request, Rady is collecting the thoughts and musings of the charter 2007 Full-Time class in an online forum titled the Founders Tribute Book.  If you belong to the class and haven’t submitted anything, please take a look at the project and add your thoughts.

Rady Teams Sweep $50K Contest

Omega Sensors won first place and $30,000 in yesterday’s final round of the UCSD $50K Entrepreneurship Competition. Craig Braun ’07, VP of Sales and Marketing, successfully led his team to the win. Omega Sensors is a MEMS accelerometer start-up based on technology developed at SPAWAR, where Braun had worked as a former consultant with BearingPoint.

The second place finisher was AlisTech, an oncology biotech venture led by Nick Boyle, Brian Guzik, Vanee Pho, Mike Sitzmann and Bill Warner, all from the class of 2007. AlisTech received a $10,000 second place prize and continues to be one of Rady’s brighest Lab to Market success stories.

Both groups gave sensational presentations in yesterday’s final round at Calit2. Congratulations to our outstanding teams!

Rady Projects Excel at UCSD $50K Contest

Two Rady projects have been chosen for the final round of the UCSD $50K Business Plan Contest. AlisTech, a visionary cancer biotech venture led by Nick Boyle, Brian Guzik, Vanee Pho, Mike Sitzmann and Bill Warner of the 2007 full-time program will compete alongside Omega Sensors, a MEMS accelerometer startup led by Craig Braun ’07.

AlisTech started as a Rady Lab to Market project over a year ago while Braun was paired with Omega Sensors via a 2006 project with CCAT.

The other contest finalists are ImageAware, Nemasys and Neurovigil. The final round will be held this Saturday, June 9th, from 9:30 am to 2:00 pm at Atkinson Hall, the home of Calit2.

Rady on Wikipedia

If you’re interested in Rady’s presence on Wikipedia, have a look here. Jim Trauth ’07 has kindly kept our entry up to date.

Cusano First to Sell Company

Tony Cusano ’07 has become the first Rady graduate to sell his own company. The sale of San Diego PC Repair was finalized on May, 18 2007 for an undisclosed amount. Cusano started his venture two months before entering Rady and spent the following two years building it to over $130,000 in annual revenue while earning his MBA. Tony’s work ethic is impressive. While running the company and studying at Rady, he also interned at Cornell Capital Partners in San Diego. With school coming to an end, however, Tony has decided to pursue a career in the financial sector.

Cusano credits Professor Zak for helping him build the professional skills required to complete the sale of San Diego PC Repair. Well done, Tony.

Career Connections Deploys Employment Survey

Rady Career Connections has deployed its ongoing employment survey for completion by the 2007 and 2006 classes. You will hear this time and again: please fill this out and keep it updated through graduation. It is a mission-critical tool for reporting the success of Rady graduates with respect to program rankings and development. Regardless of your job seeking status, please share 3 minutes to complete this survey.

Clean Tech Reaches Critical Mass at Rady

Clean technology has reached public critical mass at Rady with the launch of the California Clean Innovation conference. Led by Jay Brandeis ’07, seven Rady students are involved in the 2007 conference focused on energy and transportation. The event will be held at Caltech on Friday, May 11th and embody the long term collaborative efforts of students from Rady, UCLA Anderson, and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Vinod Khosla is the keynote speaker of the one day event. More details can be found in the Caltech press release.

From a local perspective, this conference is a significant milestone for UCSD’s chapter of Net Impact (founded in 2005 at Rady) and clearly positions clean technology as an innovation pillar of this program.

Rady Alumni Get Goowy

The Rady Alumni Association has adopted technology from San Diego-based Goowy Media to improve alumni communication. Widgets from Goowy’s Yourminis platform have been added to the alumni website to highlight posts from this publication, The Wire, and report on another Rady asset, San Diego weather conditions. The pilot program is the product of an independent study that three Rady students recently completed with Goowy. Thank you to Scott Parish, Rady’s Web Communications Manager, for putting the pieces together.

Alumni Board Launches Email Lists

On Monday 4/23 the Alumni Board will begin active promotion of several new technology resources, including topical email lists. These list-serves are designed to provide points of connection for the Rady community according to professional and personal interests. If you’d like to lead a list or create a new topic, please contact the Alumni Board.

Current topics include aviation, finance, food & wine, golf, life science, outdoors, sustainability, technology, and venture capital. Join as many lists as you like from the Email Lists page of the alumni website.

Brandeis Brings Shade of Green to Otterson Hall

The efforts of 2007 student Jay Brandeis to green Otterson Hall are starting to pay off. Working closely with Dean Sullivan, Assistant Dean Clark Jordan, and a host of internal and external partners, Brandeis has been a principal driver of the effort to put solar power on Phase I of Otterson Hall. After a year of conditioning, the contractual agreements for the deal are now being finalized.

The Otterson system is a photovoltaic solar array scheduled for installation in June and expected to have 19.2 kW of capacity. It will satisfy roughly 10% of Otterson’s energy demands and offset the equivalent of approximately 18-20 tons of carbon per year. The system is just the second PV installation by a U.S. business school and the first at UCSD over 5 kW. As shown below, the array will be located on the southeast corner of Otterson, opposite of RIMAC, and a monitor in public view will report its productivity.