UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering: Excellence at Scale, Access by Design

At UC San Diego, the Jacobs School of Engineering has built a reputation for pairing world-class research with a mission to widen the on-ramps into engineering. In 2025, the school stands firmly among the nation’s elite: it ranks No. 10 overall and No. 6 among public engineering schools in U.S. News & World Report, and it leads all U.S. public engineering schools in citations per publication—evidence that Jacobs School research is both prolific and highly influential.

Scale matters when you’re trying to move an innovation economy. The Jacobs School is California’s second-largest engineering school, with 9,619 students in Fall 2024 (5,994 undergraduates, 2,254 master’s students, and 1,371 Ph.D. students), and a faculty of 288 professors. In the 2023–24 academic year alone, it conferred 2,822 degrees (1,459 bachelor’s, 1,119 master’s, 244 Ph.D.s).

That size is matched by research horsepower. The school drove $316 million in federal, state, and industry research expenditures in FY24, anchoring UC San Diego’s $1.73 billion research enterprise. Roughly 49% of Jacobs School research expenditures came from government sources, with about 47% from industry partnerships and gift/endowment income—an unusually strong industry blend that speaks to the school’s translation mindset.

Innovation doesn’t stop at the lab door. Across UC San Diego, FY24 saw 431 invention disclosures, 127 license agreements, and 87 issued U.S. patents—activity that consistently places the campus at or near the top of the University of California system for invention disclosures and licenses, and helps fuel startup creation region-wide. The Jacobs School is a major engine within this ecosystem, working in concert with the Office of Innovation and Commercialization.

The Jacobs School’s departments—Bioengineering; Chemical & Nano Engineering; Computer Science & Engineering; Electrical & Computer Engineering; Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering; and Structural Engineering—regularly appear near the top of national rankings, from bioengineering (No. 8) to computer science specialties (top-15 in multiple areas). The school’s citation lead among public engineering peers underscores a culture of scholarship that sets agendas in areas from wireless systems and AI, to wearables, robotics, sustainable design, and infrastructure resilience.

That culture is reflected in the school’s deep bench of National Academy of Engineering members, including figures such as Albert P. Pisano (MEMS), Gabriel Rebeiz (RF MEMS and phased arrays), Peter Asbeck (heterojunction devices), Stefan Savage (security and reliability of networked systems), and others whose research has created entire subfields and industries.

Dean Albert P. Pisano often describes the job of an engineering school as nothing less than fueling the nation’s innovation economy. “Talented graduates in engineering and computer science are critical for building and sustaining innovation-driven industrial ecosystems,” he writes—arguing for platforms that give students hands-on practice with strategically important technologies.

Pisano is equally clear about impact beyond campus: “This vision is a blueprint for a more equitable and prosperous future in which anyone across the country has entry points to practice creating innovations.”

Those aren’t slogans; they’re operating principles. The school has invested in facilities such as Franklin Antonio Hall to foster industry-embedded research and created experiential learning programs—Global Ties, the Team Internship Program, and more—that give students practice building real systems for real users.

Jacobs’ IDEA Engineering Student Center is a national model for how to engage and retain students from historically underrepresented groups—beginning before day one on campus and continuing through graduation. The Center’s Summer Engineering Institute (SEI), a five-week, credit-bearing transition program, has supported almost 600 incoming students since 2016, building community, confidence, and academic skills that translate into higher persistence and success.

The impact extends into the region’s high schools. A multi-year UC San Diego effort led by Jacobs School educators embeds engineering problem-solving into A-G approved physics classes and teacher professional development. So far, more than 5,300 San Diego-area students across 22 schools in seven districts have learned engineering problem-solving through this program—recently boosted by a $1.51 million gift from the Girard Foundation to scale the work and expand into chemistry and biology.

This approach—meeting students where they are, in courses that “count”—is precisely the type of systematic, scalable pathway that Pisano advocates when he talks about creating “entry points to practice creating innovations.” It’s also a tangible way the school advances equity: not just recruiting underrepresented students to campus, but equipping them with the habits of mind to thrive once they arrive.

Faculty recognition at the Jacobs School is both broad and deep. Recent elections to the National Academy of Engineering, such as computer security pioneer Stefan Savage (2023), add to a long roster spanning wireless, MEMS, magnetic recording, combustion, and more. These honors join endowed chairs, Chancellor’s Faculty Fellowships, and Jacobs Faculty Scholars that support rising and established talent across departments.

Rankings reinforce that recognition. The school’s No. 1 status among public engineering schools for citations per publication reflects the steady drumbeat of groundbreaking work—papers, prototypes, and platforms that other scholars and companies rely on to build the next generation of products and infrastructure.

One of the most impressive metrics at the Jacobs School is the sheer throughput of engineering talent graduating into industry, research, and entrepreneurship. In a single academic year, the school awarded 2,822 degrees, including 244 new Ph.D.s—numbers that speak to both demand and capacity. Pisano has called this “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to pair campus-wide strategy with hands-on practicality, and the Jacobs School is seizing it.

The university’s pace of technology transfer is a useful barometer for the Jacobs School’s translational ethos. In FY24, UC San Diego recorded 431 invention disclosures, 127 license agreements, 87 U.S. patents issued, 17 license startups, and $24 million in license revenue—an innovation pipeline that regularly places the university among the nation’s top institutions for startup creation and IP activity. The Jacobs School’s research expenditures and industry partnerships are key drivers behind these outcomes, continually feeding the region’s thriving technology economy.

The Jacobs School of Engineering has achieved a rare combination: elite scholarship with public-minded scale. Its 9,600-plus students and 288 faculty power $316 million in annual research, resulting in highly cited work, industry partnerships, and tangible technology transfer. At the same time, the school is expanding who gets to participate in engineering, from pre-college classrooms to first-year bridge programs to inclusive communities that lift students through graduation.

Dean Pisano’s words capture the ethos: the goal is not only to educate and discover, but to practice engineering in ways that strengthen America’s innovation ecosystems and widen the circle of opportunity. “Talented graduates…are critical for building and sustaining innovation-driven industrial ecosystems,” he reminds us. “We make bold possible.”